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ESSAYS 


BY 


IRENE  CLARK  SAFFORD 


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BOSTON 

RICHARD    G.  BADGER 

THE    OORHAM    PRESS 


Copyright,  1920,  by  Richard  G.  Badger 


All  Rights  Reserved 


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Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


The  Gorham  Press,  Boston,  U.  S.  A. 


CONTENTS 

PAOB 

Misuse  of  Word  Affinity  in  Love  Affairs 7 

The  Changing  Season  and  Its  Obvious  Lessons 14 

The  Bught  of  Poverty  as  a  Factor  in  Society 21 

Curiosity  of  Mankind  about  the  Other  Side 26 

A  Chapter  on  Dogs  and  Their  Service  to  Mankind      ....  33 

The  Place  of  the  Home  in  the  Plan  of  Life 40 

The  Fear  of  Life  and  Its  Evil  Effects 47 

The  Visible  and  the  Invisible  Forces  in  the  Game  of  Life   .  53 

About  Heroes 60 

The  Pursuit  of  Ghosts 65 

A  Feature  of  the  Hour 70 

Our  Dumb  Relations 74 

Prophets  and  Disciples 78 

Satan  in  Literature 83 

Concerning  Happiness 87 

Individuality 91 

Science  ^ND  Laughter 95 

Life  and  Literatltie 100 

Enemies  and  Revenges 105 

The  Gospel  of  Despair 109 

Environment ....  114 

The  Riddle  of  Life 119 

Concerning  Slander 123 

Woes  of  the  Misunderstood 126 

Other  People's  Ills 130 

Telling  the  Truth 135 

The  Touch  of  Nature 140 

Pil\ctical  Side  of  Brotherly  Love 145 

Dreams  and  Visions 150 

Laws  and  Lawmakers 154 

The  Boy  and  the  Man 158 

Concerning  Fools 163 

Tangles  of  Life 167 

The  Virtues  of  the  Relation  of  Brother  and  Sister    ....  171 

The  Ethics  and  Morals  of  the  Laughing  Habit 178 

S 


M81839 


CONTENTS 


The  Current  Demand  for  an  Inspired  Millionaire 
The  Modern  Demand  for  the  Virtue  of  Cheerfulness 
Enchantment  of  the  Green-robed  Forest  Monarchs 
The  Salutary  Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  the  Winds 
The  Secrets  of  Nature  as  Revealed  by  the  Night 
The  Charm  of  the  South  to  the  Northern  Visitor 
The  End  and  Ends  of  Life 
Twin  Stars  in  Love's  Firmament 
Power  of  the  Written  Word  . 
Note  Time  by  Its  Gain,  Not  Loss 

A  Word  More 

Love's  Troubles 

Marriage  as  a  Duty 

The  Word  and  the  Idea       .     . 

As  the  War  Revealed  Heb 


PAOB 

185 
192 
199 
206 
213 
219 
226 
230 
233 
236 
241 
246 
250 
253 
257 


ESSAYS 


ESSAYS 


MISUSE  OF  WORD** AFFINITY"  IN  LOVE  AFFAIRS 

YOU  may  give  a  dog  a  bad  name  and  hang  him.  It's 
different  with  ideas.  Aye,  too,  with  the  words  that 
express  them.  Thoughts  are  things,  and  words  that  deal 
with  realities  are  not  easily  disposed  of.  "Affinity  has  been 
given  a  bad  name  and  hung,"  says  a  disgusted  commentator 
upon  the  signs  of  the  times.  "Soul  affinities"  are  some- 
thing he  liad  never  heard  of  till  reaching  our  shores,  de- 
clared the  grand  old  commander  of  the  Salvation  Army  to 
Boston  interviewers.  A  fearful  invention  of  modern  sin- 
ners too  dreadful  to  discuss  is  about  his  characterization  of 
it,  and  who  can  blame  him  in  the  face  of  th^  use  that  has 
been  made  of  it  in  these  latter  days. 

Nevertheless,  the  hanging  is  wrongly  applied,  the  con- 
demnation misses  its  object.  Affinity  is  the  law  that  swings 
the  spheres  and  keeps  all  life  and  matter  in  harmonious 
relation.  Cross  it  anywhere  and  life  goes  wrong,  and  dis- 
cord displaces  harmony.  Every  particle  of  matter  seeks 
its  affinity,  every  plant  or  organism  or  germ,  from  sea  ooze 
up,  crawls  after  it.  Chemists,  naturalists,  scientists  in  all 
lines,  know  the  calamities  that  ensue  by  the  coming  together 
of  the  uncongenial  elements,  the  nonaffinities,  in  the  physi- 
cal world.  Nature,  indeed,  wastes  little  sentiment  upon  the 
matter,  and  makes  short  shrift  of  any  of  her  subjects  or 

7 


8  Misuse  of  Word  "Affinity**  in  Love  Affairs 

forces,  that  would  disregacd  the  eternal  law  of  attraction  and 
repilJsion  tj^ai  fsjije-has  set  up  for  their  observance. 
.  PpstTuptiye  explosions,  deadly  blight,  war  to  the  death, 
\^ait;  upon  th^  ijaixivirQ  oi:  the  uncongenial  elements  and  crea- 
tions through  all  the  plant  and  animal  kingdom. 

Every  flower  and  shrub  knows  its  affinity  and  refuses  to 
take  up  with  any  other,  even  to  the  extent  of  withering  in  a 
night,  the  gardeners  tell  us,  in  many  cases  if  planted  beside 
the  unloved  alien.  Botanists  well  know  the  curious  tastes 
of  the  wild  flowers,  and  the  swift  answer  to  its  own  that 
brings  the  fragrant  white  clover  from  the  scattered  wood 
ashes,  the  catchfly  pink  from  the  blasted  ledge,  and  the 
dainty  dwarf  dandelion  from  the  oily  refuse  dropped  by  the 
flying  engine.  What  marvels  in  the  plant  world  may  come 
from  cultivating  plant  affinities,  the  California  wizard.  Bur- 
bank,  begins  to  reveal  to  an  astonished  world,  and  that 
greater  wonders  must  wait  upon  the  same  law  and  principle 
brought  to  bear  upon  the  animal  world  he  confidently  ex- 
pects. 

Shall  man,  then,  reverse  or  despise  this  principle  and 
expect  to  gain  by  it?  On  the  contrary,  is  he  not  much  like 
the  plants,  observing  it  almost  unconsciously  in  the  order- 
ing of  his  life  and  relation  everywhere;  from  the  choice  of 
the  companion  who  shows  what  he  is,  to  the  search  for  the 
"woman  thou  gavest  me,"  though  she  commonly  eludes  him. 
Reverenced  or  derided,  the  native  affinities,  the  "marriage  of 
true  minds"  figure  supremely  in  the  weal  or  woe  of  the  hu- 
man family.  The  great  and  happy  ones  testify  to  this, 
too,  however  vaguely,  and  live  by  it  whether  they  know  it 
or  not. 

That  honored  general  who  never  heard  of  soul  affinities 
till  he  reached  our  shores  has  plainly  been  living  by  just 


Misuse  of  Word  ''Affijiity*'  in  Love  Affairs  9 

such  union  to  the  noble  woman  who  shared  his  life  work  and 
pilgrimage  with  him  till  recently. 

Nothing  but  death  could  have  parted  him  from  his  wife, 
he  says,  and  he  knows  that  death  is  but  a  temporary  sepa- 
ration— the  soul  union  was  complete.  When  it  comes  to 
the  definition  of  the  real  thing  he  seems  equal  to  putting  it 
in  good  shape,  too.  "The  couple  who  have  solved  the  prob- 
lem of  loving  their  neighbor  as  themselves  and  who  enjoy 
the  perfect  understanding  that  unites  them  so  closely  that 
differences  of  opinion  do  not  suggest  the  divorce  court, 
would,  I  should  think,  be  near  to  what  you  Americans  term 
'soul  affinities,'  "  he  says,  and  it  is  well  to  have  a  good 
straightforward  Englishman  help  out  American  mumblings 
on  the  subject  like  that.  It  may  tend,  too,  to  secure  some 
better  name  for  "a  crime  against  humanity"  that  cloaks 
itself  under  the  most  sacred  truths  of  life. 

Affinity,  like  marriage,  has  been  made  to  stand  for  so 
many  monstrous  evils  that  have  no  relation  to  it  that  its 
true  significance  is  almost  lost  in  them.  Why  not  call  a 
spade  a  spade  and  let  the  queen  of  hearts  preserve  her  own 
colors?  Sarah  Grand  told  the  wretched  truth  when  she 
said,  "There  is  more  nonsense  talked  in  the  abstract  about 
marriage  as  a  failure  than  is  talked  about  any  other  branch 
of  the  conduct  of  life."  The  paragrapher  is  quite  to  the 
mark  also  who  writes:  "Marriage  is  never  a  failure,  but 
often  the  contracting  parties  are."  So  it  is  with  the  subtle 
laws  of  attraction  that  draw  two  people  together.  You 
can  not  explain  them  or  philosophize  about  them,  but  they 
are  never  a  failure,  though  their  counterfeit  always  is.  "The 
people  who  claim  to  have  found  their  affinity  don't,  as  a  rule, 
look  as  if  they  had  found  much,"  says  one  jester.  No,  but 
the  people  who  have  found  their' affinity,  though  they  don't 


10  Misuse  of  Word  "Affinity*^  m  Love  Affairs 

proclaim  it  to  the  public,  know,  like  the  good  Salvation 
Army  general,  that  they  have  found  everything. 

In  the  midst  of  all  the  scoffing  and  cynicism  touching  love 
and  marriage,  it  is  a  fine  thing  to  come  upon  such  testiino- 
nies  as  some  of  our  great  ones  bear  to  the  divine  beauty  and 
true  affinity  of  the  tie  that  binds. 

Not  long  ago  there  died  in  New  York  the  aged  and  well- 
known  poet,  Richard  Henry  Stoddard,  and  one  who  knew 
him  well  writes :  "The  sweetest  story  of  his  life  was  the  love 
for  his  wife.  Half  a  century  ago  he  married  her  and  for 
fifty  years  he  made  her  happy.  They  say  that  true  love 
and  real  sympathy  speak  without  words ;  that  a  man  and  a 
woman,  their  lives  in  tune,  can  sit  hand  in  hand  and  each 
understand  the  very  heart  throbs  of  the  other  without  one 
spoken  word.  That  is  true  sometimes.  It  means  a  devo- 
tion that  is  unselfish  and  holy."  Is  it  too  much  to  expect 
that  poor,  selfish  humanity  should  reach  that  ideal  in  its 
marriages  ^  Well,  at  least  to  recognize  it  as  the  ideal,  the 
real,  even  on  our  faulty  earth,  would  be  something  for  hon- 
est souls  to  build  on.  And  as  for  sorrows  and  disappoint- 
ments in  marriage,  the  writer  who  traces  them  all  to  the 
hour  when  "the  mysterious  door  which  leads  to  perfect  sym- 
pathy is  shut"  knew  well  her  ground. 

It  is  said  that  one  of  the  recent  victims  of  abused  affinity 
admitted  that  she  "believed  in  free  love  with  some  qualifica- 
tions." And  there  is  another  term  that  has  been  done  to 
death  by  slanderous  tongues.  True  love  is  always  free. 
It  was  never  bought  nor  bound  by  any  power  nor  device 
of  man.  It  knows  no  chains,  but  yields  itself  in  voluntary 
and  joyful  service  and  union  on  the  strength  of  that  very 
bond  of  nature  and  spirit  which  the  blind  world  makes  such 
abuse  of.  It  is  marriage's  sure  foundation,  and  besides  it 
there  is  no  other.     To  understand  and  abide  by  this  would 


Misuse  of  Word  "Afflnity*'  in  Love  Affairs  11 

It 

speedily  end  all  the  wretched  wrangle  and  rupture  in  mari- 
tal circles  and  relieve  us  of  the  eternal  nonsense  talked  and 
undertaken  by  those  who  bring  all  manner  of  creeds  and 
homilies  to  bear  upon  holy  matrimony. 

That  brilliant  young  senator  who  declares  that  he  would 
rather  talk  to  liis  wife  than  to  all  of  the  world  is  not  likely 
to  run  after  any  affinities  not  nestling  at  his  own  fireside. 
No  doubt,  too,  there  are  plenty  of  others  in  the  same  safe 
and  happy  case.  For  Sarah  Grand  is  right  again  in  opin- 
ing that  the  majority  of  married  people  are  jogging  along 
very  comfortably  and  are  reasonably  happy  in  their  united 
state,  which  supposes,  of  course,  that  the  mysterious  door 
which  leads  to  genuine  sympathy  is  not  quite  shut  to  them. 
That  native  and  subtle  attraction  which  draws  two  people 
from  all  the  world  of  humanity  to  each  other  should  have 
force  enough  to  hold  them  together  if  nature  is  at  all  true 
to  itself. 

There  should  remain  enough  appreciation  of  the  situa- 
tion to  make  one  blush  to  own  an  affinity  with  a  nature  that 
has  shown  itself  devoid  of  honor  and  decency  in  any  re- 
lation. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  men  who  abuse  their  wives  and  vio- 
late every  sacred  obligation  "don't,  as  a  rule,  look  as  if  they 
had  found  much"  when  they  take  up  with  their  affinities. 
As  a  rule  they  haven't.  If  it  is  a  severe  test  to  be  judged 
by  the  company  you  keep,  what  must  it  be  to  be  judged  by 
the  one  you  own  as  your  soul's  affinity.?  Marriage  itself 
makes  a  terrible  drain  on  the  individual  character  in  this 
respect.  A  suspicion  of  some  poor  leanings  in  the  man  or 
woman  who  accepts  an  inferior  person  for  a  life  companion 
inevitably  arises — and  perhaps  is  commonly  justifiable. 

But  what  must  it  be  to  stand  committed  to  some  dishon- 
orable creature  with  a  record  for  "crimes  against  human- 


12  Misuse  of  Word  *' Affinity*'  in  Love  Affairs 

ity"  and  wrongs  to  his  own  household  as  his  soul  affinity? 
Whether  able  to  live  up  to  it  or  not,  it  would  seem  to  be 
one  whose  soul  was  white  as  the  whitest,  that  any  high- 
minded  mortal  would  wish  to  tie  to  in  that  self-revealing 
fashion. 

Perhaps  there  may  be  a  bad  lot  of  "affinities"  in  this 
fallen  world,  and  to  bring  them  together  as  generally  as 
possible  may  be  a  way  to  work  along  the  true  nature  line 
for  the  happy  affiliation  of  the  better  sort.  Paul  probably 
realized  this  when  he  wrote  the  Corinthians.  "Be  ye  not 
unequally  yoked  together,"  and  if  the  Christian  world  had 
heeded  his  admonition  no  doubt  the  matrimonial  bark  would 
have  been  sailing  on  smooth  shining  seas  by  this  time.  It 
is  hunting  the  affinity  in  season,  and  not  out  of  season,  that 
makes  all  the  difference.  Once  unequally  yoked  together  not 
all  the  saints  or  sages  of  the  universe  offer  much  help  for 
a  mortal.  But  even  the  worst  publicans  and  sinners  who 
have  some  meeting  points  of  sympathy  and  equality  may 
sometimes  work  out  each  other's  purification  when  yoked 
together,  if  they  do  not  too  speedily  work  out  each  other's 
extinction — and  in  either  case  the  world  is  benefited  by  it. 

"One  never  need  be  afraid  of  catching  love  a  second  time," 
says  that  earnest  jester,  Jerome  K.  Jerome.  "Like  the 
measles,  we  take  it  only  once.  The  man  who  has  had  it  can 
go  into  the  most  dangerous  places,  and  play  the  most  fool- 
hardy tricks  with  perfect  safety.  He  can  look  into  sunny 
eyes  and  not  be  dazzled.  He  can  listen  to  siren  voices,  yet 
sail  on  with  steady  helm.  He  can  clasp  white  hands  in  his 
and  feel  no  electric  thrill." 

Clearly  such  a  man  is  immune  from  the  affinity  microbe 
and  the  good  people  who  are  alarmed  about  it  might  l&y 
this  to  heart.  For  it  is,  indeed,  more  than  the  "idle  thoughts 
of  an  idle  fellow,"  that  rise  to  the  truth  that  love  is  one  and 


I 


Misuse  of  Word  ^* Affinity*''  in  Love  Affairs  13 


indivisible,  and  though  admiration  and  affection  may  come 
in  at  the  open  door  of  the  human  heart  often,  and  ever,  yet 
"their  great  celestial  master.  Love,  in  his  royal  progress, 
pays  but  one  visit  and  departs."  As  Alexander  Dumas 
says,  ''Whoever  has  loved  twice  has  never  loved  at  all." 
For  "love  is  not  an  earthly  fire,  it  is  divine ;  not  chance,  not 
an  unforeseen  shock  causes  it  to  spring  up,  the  universal 
harmony  creates  it,"  he  submits,  and  they  who  seek  the 
heavenly  sense  and  not  debasing  nonsense  in  the  idea  of 
soul  affinities  miglit  find  it  here.  "Happy  are  those,"  says 
tliose  writers,  "who  can  kindle  their  earthly  altars  at  love's 
Hame,"  and  they  might  truly  add,  unhappy  and  insecure 
are  all  those  who  attempt  to  kindle  them  at  any  other. 


THE   CHANGING   SEASON  AND   ITS   OBVIOUS 
LESSONS 

REALLY  if  people  will  keep  on  dying,  unnecessary  as 
it  is,  some  speculation  in  futurities  ought  to  be  found 
to  match  it — not,  to  be  sure,  that  saints  and  sages  of  all 
ages  have  failed  to  paint  future  blessedness  or  damnation 
for  the  race  generally,  or  to  declare  how  other  people  should 
look  upon  the  private  war  with  death.  But  to  bring  the 
reality  of  it  home  to  any  mortal  creature  so  that  he  should 
truly  shape  some  future  at  all  worth  while  in  his  honest  de- 
sires, to  relieve  his  human  dread  of  death,  has  not  been 
within  the  power  of  any  master  or  mystic  in  the  whole 
strange  field.  The  crowning  mystery,  which  the  ancient 
Brahmin  declared  the  deepest  in  all  human  life,  still  re- 
mains, that  all  men  die,  yet  no  man  believes  that  he  is 
mortal. 

There  is  no  nicer  work  that  advancing  psychology  could 
turn  its  attention  to  than  this  strange  inconsistency  in  the 
attitude  of  dying  man.  If  by  its  second  or  psychic  sight  it 
could  draw  from  it  the  scientific  conclusion  that  they  are  not 
dying,  why  then  the  speculation  in  the  here  or  the  hereafter 
might  receive  an  impulse  that  all  the  religions  of  the  world 
have  not  been  able  to  give  them.  Perhaps  the  time  of  the 
falling  leaf  and  withering  flower  is  not  so  favorable  to  the 
life  vision  the  new  psychology  would  foster,  as  some  more 
gladsome  days  of  summer,  yet  the  very  fact  that  it  has  been 
spreading  its  image  of  decay  before  human  eyes  through 
all  the  centuries  without  at  all  persuading  man  that  he  shall 

14 


The  Changmg  Season  and  Its  Obvious  Lessons       15 

fall  as  the  leaf  is  a  point  of  no  minor  significance  in  the  per- 
sistence of  the  life  dreams  uppermost  in  the  human  soul. 

What  Stevenson  calls  man's  healthy  indifference  to  death 
goes  deeper  than  any  "fire,  sensibility  and  volume"  of  his 
physical  nature  can  explain,  else  youth  would  absorb  the 
whole  strength  of  it  and  age  make  its  chief  business  to  pre- 
pare itself  for  the  narrow  house  without  demur.  It  is  a 
fact  in  human  experience,  however,  that  though  youth  may 
show  a  more  reckless  disregard  of  life,  the  hold  upon  life 
and  the  schemes  for  it  grow  more  insistent  as  the  years  in- 
crease. Some  of  the  grandest  achievements  in  human  his- 
tory were  undertaken  by  men  far  past  the  prime  of  life, 
who  deliberately  started  their  ambitious  enterprises  as  if 
death  had  no  possible  chance  of  stealing  in  upon  their  full 
completion.  The  mystery  of  this  general  attitude  of  all 
mankind  toward  the  problem  of  life  and  death  is  quite  as 
Stevenson  presents  it  when  he  says :  "We  live  the  time  that 
a  match  flickers;  we  pop  the  cork  of  a  ginger  beer  bottle, 
and  the  earthquake  swallows  us  on  the  instant.  Is  it  not 
odd,  is  it  not  ^incongruous,  is  it  not  in  the  highest  sense  of 
human  speech  incredible,  that  w!  should  think  so  highly  of 
the  ginger  beer  and  regard  so  little  the  devouring  earth- 
quake?" 

Since  life  and  death  got  foothold  on  the  same  planet  that 
incongruity  has  endured  and  not  till  one  gains  the  victory 
over  the  other  can  the  incredibility  of  it  entirely  disappear. 
The  most  natural  conclusion  that  could  attend  such  incred- 
ible conduct  in  rational  beings  is  so  simple  that  more  than 
a  handful  of  seers  or  sages  one  would  think  might  have  found 
in  it  wnat  one  of  them  calls  the  "blazing  evidence"  that  life 
holds  the  palm,  crowds  out  the  idea  of  death,  that  the  de- 
vouring earthquake  does  not  devour,  that,  "if  our  bark 
sinks  'tis  to  another  sea,"  and  that  it  is  high  time  some  more 


16       The  Cha/ngmg  Season  and  Its  Obvious  Lessons 

general  and  tangible  ideas  of  what  awaits  man  on  those 
deeper  seas  of  being  should  become  a  part  of  human 
thoughts,  dreams  and  plans.  If  there  is  anything  conceiv- 
able that  could  take  the  sting  from  death  it  would  certainly 
be  some  natural,  familiar,  common  conception  of  the  un- 
broken chain  of  being  which  science  as  well  as  religion  could 
legitimately  indorse.  The  position  of  the  great  philosopher 
Swedenborg,  who  turned  the  whole  current  of  theology  to- 
ward the  rational,  tangible  ideas  of  a  future  state,  seems 
the  one  in  point.  "As  the  church's  faith  was  overthrown 
by  science,  so  on  the  basis  of  science  must  it  be  rebuilt," 
he  states,  and  the  trend  of  modern  teaching  on  the  subject 
largely  confirms  the  claim. 

Spencer's  argument  for  the  reality  of  the  things  that  per- 
sist in  consciousness  has  laid  hold  of  many  thinkers,  and 
the  logic  of  life  which  can  be  made  to  fit  with  no  other  theory 
tlian  the  continuity  of  it  shapes  much  of  the  reasoning  which 
all  writers  bring  to  the  subject.  It  is  men  of  science,  in 
the  medical  and  other  professions,  who,  like  Dr.  William  H. 
Thompson,  in  his  article  on  "The  Future  State,"  in  a  recent 
publication,  give  the  affirmative  side  of  the  problem  in  its 
strongest,  fullest  light.  Indeed,  to  reduce  the  whole  .sub- 
ject of  spirit  life  and  law  to  a  science  is  the  work  of  some  of 
the  profoundest  thinkers  of  to-day.  "The  lawful  truths  of 
spirit  are  more  scientific  than  the  constantly  shifting  facts 
of  intellectual  standards.  Hence  this  is  the  only  true  sci- 
ence," says  a  recent  writer  on  "The  Science  of  Being,"  who 
aims  to  make  a  practical  application  of  long-cherished  truths 
of  the  spirit  to  man's  life  and  future. 

The  spiritual  principles  that  underlie  all  human  life  are 
shaping  the  theories  of  leaders  and  teachers  in  every  walk 
of  life,  so  that  it  is  not  an  extravagant  charge  which  one 
fiery  writer  makes  when  he  avers  that  a  conspicuous  leader 


The  Changing  Season  and  Its  Obvious  Lessons       17 

even  in  the  political  world  is  making  his  grand  success 
through  dramatizing  the  Ten  Commandments.  The  appli- 
cation of  spirit  laws  and  truths  to  this  present  world  may 
be  the  first  step  in  getting  them  comfortably  applied  to  the 
next  one.  But  considering  the  difficulty  men  in  the  mass 
find  in  building  upon  that  basis,  it  would  clearly  be  well  for 
the  individual  to  do  more  to  achieve  the  happy  foundation 
for  himself.  Maeterlinck  realizes  this  when  he  says  "it  be- 
hooves every  man  to  formulate  some  theory  of  life  and  the 
universe  for  himself,"  and  the  probability  is  that  most  any 
man  left  to  himself  can  fashion  a  heaven  and  a  hereafter 
that  is  not  so  far  from  one  the  gracious  powers  designed  for 
him,  but  that  he  could  safely  sit  down  and  refresh  himself 
in  the  light  of  it  through  all  his  mortal  days. 

The  encouraging  feature  in  the  case  is  that  by  the  laws 
of  life  and  goodness  no  finite  dream  can  surpass  the  joys  he 
may  mark  oiit  for  himself  (that  are  prepared  for  him)  in 
that  future  state.  Accepting  simply  the  one  incontrovert- 
ible principle  of  science  and  philosophy  that  change,  but  not 
destruction  of  even  the  smallest  atom,  can  prevail  through 
all  creation  bounds,  the  whole  embarrassing  problem  of 
death,  and  evil,  which  moves  in  the  shadow  of  death,  drop 
out  of  the  reckoning,  and  a  chance  to  bring  dreams  and 
realities  together  in  a  world  of  goodness  is  the  legitimate, 
the  logical  result  with  all  the  possibilities  of  joy  that  may 
wait  upon  it.  The  fashion  of  that  joy  may  var}^  to  be 
sure,  with  the  individual's  growth  and  capacity,  but  that  it 
is  his  by  divine  right  and  heritage  of  the  spirit  is  a  part 
of  that  "science  of  being"  which  the  growing  revelations  of 
all  law  and  truth  are  making  known  to  man.  It  is  the  be- 
lief, too,  of  the  great  masters  in  the  field  that  man's  whole 
life  here  would  be  transformed  and  glorified  by  substituting 
this  nobler  and  more  philosophical  view  of  death  and  the 


18       The  Changing  Season  and  Its  Obvious  Lessons 

hereafter  for  the  vague  and  grewsome  ones  that,  in  spite  of 
all  his  lofty  religious  creeds  and  professed  beliefs  in  a  blessed 
hereafter,  he  still  clings  to.  A  recent  speaker  on  the 
preciousness  of  death,  as  declared  in  the  sacred  writings, 
says:  "A  change  which  is  precious  in  the  sight  of  the  Lord 
and  a  joy  to  the  angels  should  be  made  to  yield  something 
of  spiritual  uplift  and  eternal  outlook  to  our  lives."  This 
is  the  larger,  happier  note  which  the  spread  of  spiritual 
truth  and  the  better  understanding  of  the  laws  of  life  bring 
to  the  subject.  It  is  beyond  even  the  best  of  the  old  reckon- 
ing, which  submits: 

If  we  do  well  here,  we  will  do  well  there. 

And  I  could  tell  you  no  more  if  I  preached  till  fourscore. 

It  permits  that  rejected  "more,"  and  how  much  it  is  only 
the  soul  that  knows  its  own  longings  and  desires  can  esti- 
mate. 

Man  may  deceive  himself  as  to  the  means  of  happiness, 
but  his  desire  for  it  can  never  die  out,  nor  cease  to  appeal 
to  the  being  who  implanted  it  in  him  for  its  lawful  fulfill- 
ment. Moreover,  it  is  true  that  even  the  worst  of  men  per- 
ceive a  gleam  of  the  divine,  the  good  and  pure,  in  that  "some- 
thing still"  called  happiness  "for  which  they  bear  to  live  or 
dare  to  die."  Hence  if  the  ruling  passion  lives  on  and  ful- 
fills itself  in  "an  ampler  ether  and  diviner  air"  the  heaven 
of  happiness  must  be  reached  by  all  who  keep  the  dream  of 
it,  however  perverted,  alive  in  their  souls.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  man's  idea  of  heaven,  like  his  idea  of  God,  will 
undergo  some  startling  changes  when  he  gets  there,  and 
mainly  because  he  does  not  give  a  more  cordial  welcome  to 
the  higher  thought  of  it  here  to  which  nature  as  well  as 
saints  and  philosophers  invite  him. 

There  is  not  a  yellowing  forest  of  autumn  nor  restless 


The  Changing  Season  and  Its  Obvious  Lessons       19 

wave  that  beats  on  the  shore  that  does  not  carry  a  meaning 
far  beyond  any  that  the  poets  of  tlic  falling  leaf  and  ebbing 
tide  convey  to  us.  A  sense  of  the  infinity  of  being  and 
of  the  beauty  and  peace  in  which  nature  yields  herself  to 
its  changing  but  endless  round  brings  a  kindred  spell  to 
the  right  beholder  which  can 

Make  time   break 
And  let  us  pent-up  creatures  through 
Into  eternity,  our  due. 

It  was  thus  Benson  declares  it  when,  at  the  sight  of  a 
deep  wood  veiled  in  an  autumn  mist,  or  a  shining  wave  half 
stranded  on  the  sea  beach,  he  says  "one  feels  by  instinct 
and  by  intuition  that  one's  own  mind  is  simply  a  part  of  a 
large  and  immortal  life,  which  for  a  time  is  fenced  by  a  little 
barrier  of  identity  in  the  human  just  as  a  tiny  pool  of  sea 
water  is  for  a  few  hours  separated  from  the  great  ocean  tide 
to  which  it  belongs."  In  her  splendors  of  decay  as  in  her 
loveliness  of  revival  nature  speaks  of  an  underlying  life  of 
beauty  and  joy  of  which  man  is  a  part,  and,  but  for  losing 
liis  primal  consciousness  in  some  deep  pass  of  the  human, 
would  know  himself  a  part,  as  Adam  and  Eve  did  in  their 
happy  garden.  The  fall  of  man  no  doubt  is  somehow  con- 
nected with  the  "delusion,"  as  Benson  expresses  it,  that  he 
is  alone  and  apart,  instead  of  one  with  the  great  ocean  of 
life  and  J-.y. 

It  is  certain  that  the  closer  man  gets  to  nature,  the  less 
he  fears  death.  It  was  in  the  purple  fastnesses  of  the  great 
Sierras  that  the  light  broke  upon  Joaquin  Miller,  and,  look- 
ing up  to  its  cloud-piercing  peaks,  he  cried:  "Death  is  de- 
lightful. Death  is  dawn."  So  was  it  that  Whitman  hears 
"whispers  of  heavenly  death"  through  "mystical  breezes 
wafted  soft  and  low,"  and  reads  the  symbol  of  it  in  "Ripples 


20       The  Chcmgmg  Season  and  Its  Obvious  Lessons 

of  unseen  rivers,  tides  of  a  current  flowing,  forever  flowing." 
Nature  makes  change  and  decay  so  far  from  terrible  that  it 
must  be  through  some  frightful  break  with  her  that  man  has 
managed  to  fill  them  with  such  grewsome  horrors  as  the  final 
change  still  carries.  To  restore  it  to  something  of  her 
gentle  and  orderly  process,  if  not  eliminate  it  altogether,  is 
the  effort  of  a  goodly  company  of  mental  and  psychic  teach- 
ers, and  assuredly  it  is  not  to  be  despised.  But  when  all  is 
told  some  measure  of  familiarity  of  truer  touch  with  the 
world  to  be  is  the  great  help  needed  for  people  who  are  not 
to  find  themselves  mourning  like  the  "woman  in  glory,"  for 
their  house,  their  bread,  their  sheets  to  wash  and  whiten. 
Browning  was  never  more  the  master  seer  in  every  human 
field  than  when  he  wrote: 

New  hopes  should  animate  the  world. 
New  light  should  dawn  from  new  revealings 
To  a  race  weighed  down  so  long,  forgotten  so  long. 
Thus  should  the  heaven  reserved  for  us 

At  last  receive  the  creatures  whom  no  unwonted  splendors 
blind. 


THE   BLIGHT   OF   POVERTY   AS   A   FACTOR   IN 

SOCIETY 

THE  "sociological  woman"  who  proposed  killing  off  the 
children  of  the  slums  should  have  taken  counsel  with 
the  sociological  man.  Then  she  would  have  known  that  her 
humane  effort  would  be  only  a  work  of  supererogation. 
John  Spargo,  in  his  notable  book,  "The  Bitter  Cry  of  the 
Children,"  shows  how  effectually  the  business  takes  care  of 
itself.  Eighty  thousand  babies  a  year  succumb  to  their 
deadly  environment  in  the  sweet  Christian  cities  of  our  land. 
And  this,  too,  ^len  they  are  born  sound  and  healthy  and 
with  the  same  physical  chance  for  life  that  the  most  favored 
chUd  of  wealth  and  luxury  can  show.  "Poverty  is  the  Herod 
of  modern  civilization"  that  slaughters  the  children  of  one 
year  old  and  under  with  neater  dispatch  than  the  Judean 
tyrant  ever  knew. 

So  far,  so  good,  as  the  heroic  method  of  the  woman  re- 
ferred to  goes.  For  they  are  put  out  of  their  misery  and 
squalor,  and  society  is  saved  a  new  influx  of  criminals  and 
imbeciles.  Nevertheless,  a  new  factor  has  entered  into  the 
reckoning,  and  one  of  such  vital  import  that  every  lover  of 
the  race  should  take  it  into  consideration  at  once.  It  de- 
velops along  the  line  of  the  long  contention  between  heredity 
and  environment  for  controlling  influence  in  human  life,  and, 
as  set  forth  by  the  latest  research,  declares  emphatically 
that  this  old  biologic  quarrel  touching  modifications  in  the 
human  species  must  stop  both  in  the  interest  of  disease  and 
the  uplifting  of  the  race. 

21 


22       The  Blight  of  Poverty  as  a  Factor  in  Society 

Heredity  in  the  old  sense  is  nonexistent.  The  anomalies 
are  neither  due  to  inherent  wickedness  of  the  germ  plasm, 
nor  are  they  inscrutable  acts  of  God,  but  are  due  to  definite 
physical  causes.  The  offspring  of  normal  people  are  not 
foreordained  to  be  normal  nor  the  children  of  degenerates 
to  be  damned.  From  this  it  follows  conclusively  that  the 
admittedly  healthy  babe  of  the  slums  could  have  an  equal 
chance  with  the  babe  of  the  castle,  if  equally  good  physical 
causes  could  be  brought  to  bear  upon  it,  and  it,  in  short, 
may  not  be  too  much  to  say  with  such  writers  that  "were  the 
social  programme  adequate,  an  entire  generation  could  be 
taken  in  hand  and  elevated  at  a  jump." 

Meanwhile,  the  significant  fact  that  the  problem  of  pov- 
erty lies  back  of  this  and  pinching  want  declares  itself, 
here  as  elsewhere,  the  grand  agent  of  human  destruction, 
might  narrow  still  farther  the  work  of  the  humanitarian  and 
reformer.  Indeed,  if  the  cause  of  all  human  ills  is  once  fixed 
upon,  why  should  not  all  human  effort  and  all  human  gospel 
be  concentrated  upon  the  intelligent  purpose  of  removing  it. 
"Feed  my  sheep,"  "oppress  not  the  poor,"  "give  to  him  that 
needeth" ;  this  is  an  old  Gospel  and,  in  the  light  of  sociology 
and  science,  about  the  only  one  the  world  requires  for  its 
uplifting. 

It  is  rounding  out  the  circle  most  significantly  when  we 
find  age  and  infancy  uniting  in  such  testimonies  to  the 
wrong  in  the  case  as  the  authorities  now  give  us.  "Poverty 
is  the  Herod  of  modern  civilization"  that  slaughters  the 
innocents  by  the  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands,  writes 
Spar  go.  "Remove  poverty  and  nearly  all  the  ills  of  life 
and  society  would  vanish  with  it,"  says  another  close  stu- 
dent of  the  social  problem.  It  is  going  far  afield  to  talk  of 
killing  off  the  degenerate  and  unfortunate,  he  humanely  adds, 
when  simply  bettering  their  physical  condition   would  lift 


The  Blight  of  Poverty  as  a  Factor  in  Society      23 

them  out  of  the  deforming  blackness  into  the  light  of  good 
and  useful  citizens.  "Poverty  is  the  slough  of  despond," 
says  an  older  and  stronger  writer  still,  "which  Bunyan  saw 
in  his  dream,  and  into  which  good  books  may  be  tossed  for- 
ever without  results.  To  make  people  industrious,  prudent, 
skillful  and  intelligent  they  must  be  relieved  from  want.  If 
you  would  have  the  slave  show  the  virtues  of  the  freeman 
you  must  first  make  him  free." 

The  wonder  is  that  gibes  and  judgment,  preaching  and 
prayers,  treatises  and  arguments,  are  alike  unavailing  in 
the  face  of  an  evil  that  all  men  recognize  as  the  deadliest 
one  that  afflicts  societ}'.  Not  all  those  who  trumpet  the 
club  speaker's  proposal  to  chloroform  slum  babies  abroad 
pause  to  consider  the  cause  given  for  such  extreme  measures. 
Disclaiming  all  desire  for  notoriety,  she  declares:  "I  sug- 
gest this  because*!  have  worked  myself  thin  trying  to  inter- 
est municipal  officers  and  philanthropic  individuals  in  the 
poverty  and  frightful  conditions  prevailing  in  New  York. 
I  have  talked  myself  hoarse.  I  have  lectured.  I  have 
written  letters  to  authorities  without  effect,"  and  it 
is  because  "no  other  remedy  can  be  found"  that  she  would 
put  an  end  "to  miserable  children  to  whom  living  is  only 
prolonged  agony." 

But  meantime  for  teachers  or  reformers  to  go  on  preach- 
ing any  other  gospel  or  propounding  any  other  method  of 
salvation  for  the  race  till  this  fundamental  one  is  put  in 
operation  is  rather  a  waste  of  breath  and  ammunition. 
"Here,"  says  Mr.  Spargo,  "is  the  real  reconstruction  of 
society,  the  building  of  healthy  bodies  and  brains,"  and  "to 
fight  poverty  in  its  dire  effect  upon  the  child,"  to  say  noth- 
ing of  the  adult,  he  tells  us  tliat  the  "co-operation  of  all  the 
constructive  forces  in  society,  private  and  public,  is  neces- 
sary."    He  is  not  the  first  one  to  suggest  either  that  pen- 


24       The  Blight  of  Poverty  as  a  Factor  in  Society 

sions  to  mothers  dependent  upon  their  earnings  should  be 
a  prime  care  of  any  government  that  would  have  good  citi- 
zens and  members  of  society  turned  out  from  human  homes. 
But  how  much  attention  is  even  our  own  proud  government 
giving  to  these  sociological  truths?  It  still  seems  better  to 
it  to  build  prisons  and  reform  schools  for  such  boy  criminals 
and  degenerates  as  now  infest  our  cities  than  to  give  poor, 
overworked  mothers  the  chance  to  bear  and  rear  their  chil- 
dren in  the  sane  and  healthful  atmosphere  that  would  save 
them  all. 

Perhaps  it  is  not  strange  that  the  discouraged  worker  in 
these  fields  feels  at  times  that  there  is  nothing  but  chloro- 
form for  the  unfortunates,  so  strangely  cold  and  deaf  is  the 
ear  which  those  in  authority  turn  to  these  vital  questions. 
Theoretically  every  decent  citizen  professes  to  desire  the  ele- 
vation of  the  human  race.  Practically  he  will  give  more 
intelligent  care  to  a  breed  of  cattle  or  poultry  along  scientific 
lines  than  to  a  whole  generation  of  children.  And  this,  too, 
when  science  assures  him  that  by  the  same  care  of  the  chil- 
dren the  whole  race  could  be  elevated  at  a  jump. 

The  modern  Herod  is  not  heredity ;  it  is  environment,  pov- 
erty of  nourishment  and  air,  unsanitary  and  bad  economic 
conditions,  is  the  reading  of  the  case  John  Spargo  brings  to 
the  surface.  And  still  the  desperately  earnest  woman,  who 
has  worked  herself  thin  trying  to  bring  philanthropic  people 
to  the  help  of  the  impoverished  children,  finds  it  so  hopeless 
that  she  wants  to  chloroform  them  all — the  children,  not  the 
philanthropists — though  perhaps  one  might  take  it  either 
way.  No  doubt,  at  any  rate,  a  new  order  of  pilanthropists 
should  be  raised  up  to  meet  the  present  position  and  illumi- 
nation of  the  social  problem,  and  if  they  can  not  do  some- 
thing better  than  distribute  tracts  and  books,  and  cast-off 
clothing,  to  "meet  a  starving  people's  needs,"  or  still  "the 


The  Blight  of  Poverty  as  a  Factor  in  Society      25 


bitter  cry  of  the  children,"  then  the  teacliers  and  the 
preachers  and  the  noisy  reformers  might  as  well  retire  from 
their  labors  and  let  the  world  slide  downhill  as  fast  as  it  will. 
At  least,  we  should  not  be  making  a  mock  of  people's  mis- 
fortunes, and  a  hypocrisy  of  all  the  humane  and  pious  pro- 
fessions we  trumpeted  through  the  earth.  To  be  shown  a 
way  of  salvation  for  the  race  and  turn  our  backs  on  it 
should  at  least  end  any  further  pretensions  that  we  are 
loftily  concerned  in  saving  anybody  but  ourselves. 


CURIOSITY  OF  MANKIND  ABOUT  THE   OTHER 

SIDE 

1  ALWAYS  have  been  curious  to  know  what  was  on  the 
other  side,"  he  said,  and  slipped  away  in  dreamy  sleep 
to  find  out.  And  "summer  was  in  the  world,  sweet  singing." 
And  he  loved  the  summer,  and  the  birds  and  flowers,  this 
gentle  Uncle  Remus,  who  wrote  himself  kin  to  every  living 
thing  in  the  Father's  world.  Why  should  the  great  unknown 
have  beckoned  him  with  such  mystic  spell?  How  could  he 
bear  to  die  and  leave  so  much  beneath  the  summer  sun  ?  The 
poet  says  that 

When  he  heard  the  darkness  calling 
He  knew  that  darkness  dreamed  of  light. 

But,  no,  he  only  guessed  it.  He  was  curious  to  know. 
He  was  strong  to  try.  He  died  in  July  and  in  the  July  issue 
of  his  magazine  the  note  repeats  itself, 

I  shall  make  a  brave  death. 

Stand,  then,  by  and  see 
How  old  comrade  Life  and  I 

Can  part  company. 

To  part  in.  a  cry  for  higher  knowledge  is  not  entirely  new 
to  men  who  have  been  going  out  in  philosophic  question  of 
the  "great  perhaps"  in  all  ages.  But  that  the  desire  to 
know  may  become  a  ruling  passion  that  can  rob  death  of 
its  terrors  seems  not  improbable  in  the  growing  insistence 
of  that  knocking  at  the  gates  of  the  unseen  which  the  times 

26 


Curiosity  of  Mankind  About  the  Other  Side         27 

record.  More  than  one  suicide  in  recent  days  has  given 
"comrade  life"  the  slip  through  the  strength  of  his  curiosity 
to  know  what  was  on  the  other  side.  A  strange  reaction 
from  that  dread  of  something  after  death  appears  in  the 
haunting  desire  of  all  men  to  know  what  that  something  is. 
It  is  not  only  the  psychical  societies  that  compact  with  the 
departing  comrade  to  help  bore  a  tunnel,  as  Sir  Oliver 
Lodge  puts  it,  beneath  the  roaring  waters  of  time  and 
eternity,  whereby  the  two  worlds  may  come  into  communica- 
tion, but  even  an  orthodox  parent  was  but  lately  shaken  out 
of  his  dying  slumber  by  a  devoted  daughter  who  craved  a 
last  pledge  that  he  would  in  some  way  speak  to  her  from 
the  other  shore. 

That  an  existence  which  holds  death  in  its  reckoning  owes 
some  better  a'ccount  of  it  than  has  yet  been  given,  is  a  con- 
viction of  many  thinkers,  while  the  sense  of  the  unknown, 
forever  haunting  the  known,  makes  the  true  enjoyment  of 
life  a  thing  impossible.  "Our  only  chance  in  this  world  of 
a  complete  happiness,"  writes  Mr.  Arthur  Symons,  "lies  in 
the  measure  of  our  success  in  shutting  the  eyes  of  the  mind 
and  deadening  its  sense  of  hearing,  and  dulling  the  keenness 
of  its  apprehension  of  the  unknown.  To  live  through  a 
single  day  with  that  overpowering  consciousness  of  our  real 
position,  wiiich,  in  the  moments  in  which  alone  it  mercifully 
comes,  is  like  blinding  light  or  the  thrust  of  a  flaming  sword, 
would  drive  any  man  out  of  his  senses.  And  so  there  is  a 
great,  silent  conspiracy  between  us  to  forget  death;  all  our 
lives  are  spent  in  busily  forgetting  death." 

That  is  one  phase  of  the  subject,  but  another  quite  as 
forceful  shows  itself  in  the  determination  to  make  death  de- 
liver up  its  secrets  and  let  in  some  knowledge  of  the  life  be- 
yond. "It  is  a  strange  fact,"  says  a  writer  on  this  side  of  the 
case,  "that  this  generation  has  no  fear  of  death.     We  have 


28         Curiosity  of  Mankind  About  the  Other  Side 

a  morbid  dread  of  disease,  a  horror  of  age  and  decay,  but 
we  do  not  fear  to  die."  Death  as  the  great  revealer  is 
verily  coming  to  be  courted  by  the  human  race,  and  unless 
science  can  probe  the  darkness,  or  religion  recruit  man's 
faith,  suicides  for  enlightenment  may  not  be  an  impossible 
development  of  man's  desire  to  know  what  shall  be  after 
him  under  the  sun. 

It  is  a  curious  circumstance  that  it  is  in  the  path  of  the 
suicide  that  one  of  the  greatest  of  modern  painters  shows 
death  robbed  of  his  last  chance.  The  picture,  "Death  on 
the  Pale  Horse,"  was  suggested  to  the  artist,  Ryder,  by  the 
suicide  of  a  man  who  had  lost  all  his  savings  on  the  race 
track.  It  presents  a  bleak  and  lonely  track,  shadowed  by 
weird  shapes  of  lowering  cloud  and  distant  hill,  where  death 
having  "ridden  down  all  rivals,  is  condemned  to  ride  round 
forever  deprived  of  the  dear  companionship  of  his  enemy 
and  victim,  man."  It  is  not  exactly  the  Christian  idea  of 
the  victory  over  death,  but  it  certainly  might  suggest  the 
short  work  man  would  make  of  it  if  he  took  the  mystery  of 
life  and  death  into  his  own  hands,  either  as  a  matter  of 
escape  or  illumination.  It  would  seem  also  to  carry  small 
encouragement  for  the  self-slayer,  however  effective  his 
method  of  robbing  death  of  his  pastime,  since  a  black  pall  of 
desolation  and  emptiness  covers  the  very  field  of  the  suicide's 
operation  and  leaves  a  sense  of  utter  annihilation  the  only 
one  that  follows  him.  It  is  the  very  opposite  of  the  apoca- 
lyptic vision  of  death's  vanquishment,  where  living  victors 
in  the  tabernacle  of  the  Most  High  hear  the  resounding 
note,  "There  shall  be  no  more  death,  neither  sorrow  nor 
crying."  Life  reigns  in  the  one  case  and  death  in  the  other, 
and  art  has  issued  a  canon  against  self-slaughter  of  telling 
character,  whether  designed  or  not. 


Curiosity  of  Mankind  About  the  Other  Side         29 


The  attempts  of  artist  natures  to  probe  death's  secrets  are 
told  elsewhere  than  on  canvas  in  some  cases,  but  still  the 
curtain  drops  with  the  last  breath.  Not  long  ago  a  famous 
Russian  author  undertook  to  try  the  last  pass  for  himself 
and  his  fellows.  He  committed  suicide  and  arranged  to  give 
all  the  light  that  could  come  to  him  to  his  friends  in  writing. 
Having  opened  the  veins  of  his  left  arm  he  writes,  "I  am 
indescribably  happy.  There  is  a  sweet  taste  in  my  mouth 
though  I  am  unable  to  quench  m}^  thirst  with  water.  Every- 
thing around  me  is  filled  with  a  beautiful  blue  smoke  full  of 
the  finest  perfume.  To  die  seems  great  happiness."  So 
far  so  good — but  the  rest  is  silence.  Of  what  the  friends 
most  longed  to  hear  there  is  not  a  word.  "Death,  like  gen- 
eration, is  a  secret  of  nature,"  said  Aurelius,  and  whether 
of  nature  or  of  God  man  makes  small  headway  in  seeking  to 
probe  it.  The  oldest  science  and  the  newest  meet  on  the 
same  plane  without  establishing  anything. 

A  famous  French  scientist  lately  submits  that  at  death 
the  soul,  or  astral  body,  escapes  like  a  nebulous  globe. 
"When  my  wife  died,"  he  says,  "a  nebulous  globe  escaped 
from  her  like  a  soul."  But  does  he  consider  how  long  ago 
Heraclitus  declared  that  "the  soul  is  a  dry  light  which  flies 
out  vyf  the  body  at  deatli  as  lightning  escapes  from  a  cloud.''" 
Stories  of  suspended  animation  are  as  old  as  stories  of  hu- 
man life,  but  what  evidence  of  the  tales  brought  back  by  them 
is  of  a  kind  to  satisfy  human  intelligence.''  Even  the  charge 
of  skepticism  that  stands  in  the  way  of  it  is  ancient  as  the 
hills,  for  does  not  Plutarch  tell  us  that  "the  knowledge  of 
divine  things  for  the  most  part  is  lost  to  us  by  incredulit}^''" 
That,  too,  is  an  unproved  claim,  for  who  of  all  the  believing 
saints,  save  in  a  mystic  dream,  has  ever  unbarred  the  gates 
of  death  far  enough  to  give  humanity  a  reliable  vision  of  the 


30         Curiosity  of  Mankind  About  the  Other  Side 

other  shore?  Powers  beyond  man's  reach  still  guard  the 
avenues  of  sight,  and  we  "are  all  of  us  better  believers  than 
we  can  possibly  give  a  reason  for." 

The  gain  is  in  the  ages  that  have  so  widely  changed  fear 
to  expectancy  and  given  place  for  a  pleasing  curiosity  in 
the  things  to  come  to  enter  into  the  death  sentence  which 
both  nature  and  theology  in  their  sterner  aspect  had  made 
so  terrible.  Such  horrors  as  but  lately  hung  over  the  poor 
soul's  curiosity  to  know  what  was  on  the  other  side  only 
writers  like  Mrs.  Stone  could  do  justice  to,  or  that  fiery 
Jonathan  Edwards,  who  pictured  it  dangling  over  the  pit 
of  hell  in  a  manner  not  calculated  to  quicken  expectancy  or 
speculation  as  to  the  future  state.  The  better  ideas  of 
death,  quite  as  much  as  the  better  ideas  of  life,  mark  the 
progress  of  the  race  Starward;-  The  relation  of  the  living 
to  the  dead  has  much  to  do  with  this.  "Dead  and  forgotten" 
has  been  too  much  the  mournful  story  of  those  who  have 
crossed  the  bar,  though  still  some  gentle  souls  like  Dickens 
have  earnestly  reminded  us  that  though  the  dead  may  not 
need  us,  yet  forever  and  forever  we  need  the  dead. 

Verily,  is  it  not  rude  "to  leave  the  dead  wholely  dead," 
when  in  such  abounding  being  they  declare  their  immortal- 
ity.? Rounding  out  time  by  eternity  is  that  part  of  seeing 
life  whole  which  wipes  death  out  of  the  reckoning  with  great 
souls.  As  a  guess  at  the  beyond,  too,  it  is  the  most  logical 
thing  in  the  count.  "A  brother  to  the  eternal  light,"  as 
some  one  so  beautifully  calls  Harris,  could  well  afford  to 
let  his  fancy  rove  in  curious  questioning  of  the  other  side. 
Nor  can  the  humblest  of  earth's  dwellers  afford  to  leave  him 
"wholly  dead"  who  "made  the  lowly  cabin  fires  light  the 
far  windows  of  the  world."  It  is  a  pretty  story  that  tells 
of  a  tame  rabbit  appearing  mysteriously  from  undiscover- 
able  quarters  at  the  dead  author's  home  within  a  week  after 


tr 


II 


i 


Curiosity  of  Mankind  About  the  Other  Side         31 

his  departure,  and  persistently  making  its  bed  beneath  his 
window,  as  if  in  tender  tribute  to  the  friend  wlio  drew  Br'er 
Rabbit  into  the  universal  friendship.  None  can  say,  either, 
that  some  subtle  chord  of  sympathy  and  relationship  did 
not  bring  the  strange,  shy  visitant  in  that  supreme  hour 
to  a  spot  linked  so  closely  with  its  tiny  life. 

The  unities  of  being,  the  tie  that  binds  all  living  creatures, 
are  but  dimly  guessed  by  us,  and  the  mysteries  of  life  lying 
all  about  us  are  deep  and  baffling  enough  to  make  the  mys- 
tery of  death  not  so  very  strange  after  all.  Emerson's  idea 
that  the  power  that  can  manage  the  one  can  safely  be  trusted 
to  take  care  of  the  other  is  the  logic  of  the  situation,  and 
the  good  cheer  of  it  is  with  him,  too,  when  he  adds :  "I  have 

n  what  glories  of  climate,  of  summer  mornings  and  even- 
ings, of  midnight  sky ;  I  have  enjoyed  the  benefits  of  all  the 
complex  machinery  of  arts  and  civilization,  and  its  results 
of  comfort.  The  good  power  can  easily  provide  me  millions 
more  as  good."  Physicians  and  scientists  are  struggling 
as  never  before  to  prolong  man's  days  upon  earth.  Every 
week  turns  out  sage  treatises  admonishing  us  to  take  care 
of  all  that  we  think — yea,  even  of  wretched  me;at  and  drink 
— that  we  m  y  continue  in  the  land  of  the  living.  One  thing 
makes  them  all  valueless.  They  do  not  master  the  secret 
of  perennial  youth.  Life  without  that  is  a  thankless  offer- 
ing.    Death  as  the  way  to  it  is  a  boon  none  would  forego. 

The  English  writer  speaks  to  the  mark  in  declaring  ths^i 
it  is  age,  not  death,  that  this  generation  fears.  No  sane 
man  would  want  to  live  200  years,  or  even  100,  dwelling  upon 
the  sordid  animal  affairs  of  eating  and  drinking,  says  an 
American  writer  who  weighs  the  dietetic  counsels.  Better 
to  have  a  church  fall  on  him  or  some  such  kindly  accident 
carry  him  off.  Till  youth  and  native  vigor  that  set  man 
free  from  these  poor  proddings   of  the  flesh   can   come  at 


52         Curiosity  of  Mankind  About  the  Other  Side 

science's  call,  the  prolongation  of  his  days  holds  little  charm 
for  him.     Rather,  his  heart  is  with  the  poet,  who  prays : 

When  the  warp  and  woof  are  thinning. 
And  the  daylight  is  half  blind, 
Give  me  death,  that  I  may  find 
Life,  upon  some  morning  height. 
Sheen  and  sheer  above  the  night. 


A   CHAPTER  ON  DOGS  AND  THEIR  SERVICE   TO 

MANKIND 


H 


ERO  DOGS"  is  a  good  name  for  a  book,  but  it  would 

take  a  great  many  books  to  do  justice  to  the  subject. 

In  all  the  volumes  that  have  already  been  given  to  "man's  best 

friend"  the  half  has  not  been  told.     Writers  find  themselves 

swamped  in  an  attempt  to  enumerate  the  instances  of  hero- 

I^P  ism  which  the  dogs  of  any  little  town  or  neighborhood  can 

furnish.     Tjie  good  woman  who  has  lately  organized  a  "So- 

^^  ciety  of  Hero  Dogs"  is  likely  to  be  overwhelmed  by  the  com- 

^B  pany  of  eligible  subjects.     Scarcely  a  home  can  be  found 

^B  where  some  tale  of  fidelity  or  sacrifice  on  the  part  of  the 

hero  dog  does  not  enter  into  its  history  or  traditions,  and 

more  than  the  poor  Indian  finds  it  hard  to  dream  of  any 

heaven  where  ^is  faithful  dog  shall  not  bear  him  company. 

From  the  dogs  of  the  Zodiac  to  the  three-headed  dog  of 
the  Styx,  there  is  no  place  so  high  or  low  in  man's  universe 
that  the  dog  can  not  find  entrance  to  it.  Classic  literature 
especially  abounds  in  tributes  to  the  dog,  whether  Ulysses 
or  Alcibiades  furnish  the  varying  text.  It  was  the  famous 
epitaph  of  Lord  Byron  on  his  dog,  Boatswain,  however,  that 
put  the  noble  dog  in  his  true  place  among  earth's  habitants. 
"Near  this  spot,"  wrote  the  poet,  "are  deposited  the  remains 
of  one  who  possessed  beauty  without  vanity,  strength  with- 
out insolence,  courage  without  ferocity,  and  all  the  virtues 
of  man  without  his  vices.  This  praise,  which  would  be  un- 
meaning flattery  if  inscribed  over  human  ashes,  is  but  a 
just  tribute  to  Boatswain." 

33 


34      A  Chapter  on  Dogs  and  Their  Service  to  Mankind 

Comparisons  between  man  and  the  dog  are  commonly  on 
the  dog's  side,  and  even  hero  worship  shows  a  leaning  in  that 
direction  that  the  "Society  of  Hero  Dogs"  but  tardily 
recognizes.  "I  have  known  dogs  and  I  have  known  school 
heroes  that,  set  aside  the  fur,  could  hardly  have  been  told 
apart,"  said  Stevenson.  Unquestionably  if  the  refinement 
of  heroism  lies  in  giving  one's  life  for  another,  no  company 
of  school  heroes  can  match  the  army  of  faithful  dogs  that 
have  given  their  lives  for  their  masters  or  their  boy  play- 
mates, to  say  nothing  of  those  that  have  perished  in  the 
cause  of  science  and  exploration.  It  is  quite  to  the  mark 
that  one  writer  exclaims,  "Now  that  the  hurrahing  over  polar 
expeditions  is  dying  down,  humane  journals  are  pointing 
out  that  a  portion  of  the  praise  bestowed  upon  North  Pole 
explorers  should  be  awarded  to  the  unfortunate  dogs,  with- 
out whose  services,  given  at  a  great  cost  of  suffering  to 
themselves,  the  attempt  at  pole  searching  would  have  been 
impossible." 

It  is  Nansen  himself  who  gives  the  force  to  this  position 
in  the  brief  quotation  from  his  book  "Farthest  North." 
For  after  admitting  the  horrible  cruelty  practiced  upon 
these  polar  dogs,  he  says,  "When  I  think  of  all  those  splendid 
animals,  toiling  for  us  without  a  murmur  as  long  as  they 
could  move  a  muscle,  never  getting  any  thanks  or  so  much 
as  a  kind  word,  daily  writhing  under  the  lash,  I  have  moments 
of  bitter*  self-reproach."  It  is  Nansen,  too,  who  points  the 
fearful  moral  that  such  treatment  of  man's  faithful  friend 
carries.  "It  is  a  sad  part  of  expeditions  of  this  kind,"  he 
writes,  "that  one  systematically  kills  all  better  feelings  until 
only  hard-hearted  egoism  remains."  This  is  the  more  hu- 
man side  of  the  dog  question  which  science  and  civilization 
are  largely  responsible  for.  When  man  roamed  free  through 
the  glad  early  world  regardless  of  poles  or  "world  plaudits," 


I 


A  Chapter  on  Dogs  and  Their  Service  to  Mankind     35 

his  faithful  dog  served  many  of  the  purposes  which  the 
involved  machinery  of  civilization  have  since  made  necessary, 
from  pantries  to  scavengers.  The  Kentucky  colonel  who 
furnishes  a  late  paragraph  for  the  "wet  and  dry"  columns 
preserves  the  traditions  of  those  happy  days.  "He  ate  a 
breakfast  every  day,"  we  are  told,  "which  consisted  of  a 
nice  juicy  stake,  a  bottle  of  whisky  and  a  dog.  He  had  the 
dog  eat  the  steak."  The  wandering  Ulysses  needed  no 
pantry  nor  scavenger  to  care  for  the  left-overs  from  his 
daily  meal.  The  dog  disposed  of  it  all,  and  half  the  sani- 
tation problems  of  to-day  were  done  away  with. 

It  was  when  Alcibiades  cut  off  his  dog's  tail  to  divert 
the  unwelcome  attentions  of  the  Athenians  from  himself, 
that  the  more  selfish  and  inhuman  uses  of  his  four-legged 
friend  began  to  show  themselves  in  man.  The  bobtailed 
curs  and  horses  of  the  present  day  are  a  living  commentary 
upon  the  heartlessness  and  ingratitude  of  the  gay  Athenian 
youth  toward  the  splendid  animal  that  had  clung  to  him  in 
patient  walctiiulness  through  many  a  bout  that  had  put  his 
human  companions  to  flight.  That  they  should  cease  to 
comment  upon  his  crooked  ways  in  turning  their  attention 
to  his  bobtailed  dog  was  the  brilliant  excuse  of  the  young 
poet  arid  philosopher  for  the  abuse  of  his  famous  pet. 

The  amount  of  abuse  that  the  dog  will  stand  and  cling  still 
*o  a  "miserable,  thankless  master"  is  a  thing  unparalleled 
in  the  whole  world  of  sentient  creatures,  and  that  man  has 
taken  advantage  of  it  in  so  many  ways  is  one  of  the  poorest 
things  in  all  his  history.  Sometimes  it  comes  from  a  lack  of 
intelligence  which  the  wonderful  sagacity  of  the  dog  makes 
pitiful.  But  lately  a  beautiful  shepherd  dog  came  to  his 
death  through  just  such  woeful  stupidity  on  the  part  of  man. 
For  years  he  had  been  the  pet  and  servant  of  a  family  liv- 
ing in  the  wooly  West,  where  a  watchdog's  services  were  no 


36     A  Chapter  on  Dogs  arid  Their  Service  to  Mankind 

sinecure.  From  tramps  to  coyotes  and  rattlesnakes,  he  had 
guarded  the  household  and  little  ones  from  many  a  threat- 
ened danger,  and  bore  numerous  battle  scars  from  savage 
animals  encountered  in  the  children's  path — in  one  case 
being  frightfully  gored  by  an  infuriated  cow  that  bore  down 
upon  the  toddling  baby.  Hitched  to  a  sled,  he  pulled  the 
children  to  school  tlirough  the  snows  of  winter,  and  watched 
them  safely  past  the  frail  bridge  over  a  roaring  creek  in 
summer — never  failing  to  be  at  his  post  when  the  hour  of 
their  return  arrived. 

When  in  the  course  of  human  events  one  daughter  married 
and  went  into  a  remote  part  of  the  region,  he  became  the 
mail  carrier  to  bear  notes  back  and  forth  from  the  two 
homes.  From  the  hour  that  the  first  note  was  tied  about 
his  neck  with  the  simple  word  "Take  it  to  Mamie,"  he  never 
misunderstood  or  failed  in  his  mission;  and,  more  wonder- 
ful still,  being  told  to  wait  for  an  answer,  he  would  settle 
down  on  Mamie's  stoop  till  she  tied  the  white  scrap  about 
his  neck,  when  he  fled  like  a  deer  through  wood  and  mead, 
back  to  the  old  home.  Sometimes  the  storm  made  the  creek 
high  and  the  way  beset  with  diflficulties,  but  the  faithful 
messenger  always  managed  to  preserve  the  note  intact.  On 
one  occasion  the  dark  hours  came  before  the  rural  deliverer 
could  make  his  way  through  the  tangled  wood  and  swollen 
stream  to  the  daughter's  cottage. 

It  happened,  too,  by  one  of  those  cruel  turns  of  fate  no 
creature  can  account  for,  that  an  alarm  of  mad  dogs  had 
that  day  disturbed  the  scattered  families  of  the  neighbor- 
hood, and  Mamie  and  her  husband  had  gone  to  bed  with  the 
terror  of  them  before  their  eyes.  So,  when  the  eager  "Tow- 
ser"  leaped  on  the  porch,  all  wet  and  muddy,  and  began  his 
friendly  wiggling  and  wagging  against  the  familiar  door, 
the  poor,  stupid  human  creatures  within  never  paused  to 


A  Chapter  on  Dogs  and  Their  Service  to  Mankind     87 

consider  tJiat  it  might  be  tlieir  own  noble  friend  bearing  the 
home  message  to  them,  but,  taking  him  for  one  of  the  mad- 
desi:  of  the  mad  dogs  in  their  bewildered  minds,  shot  him 
through  the  heart  from  the  cottage  window.  And  there,  in 
tlie  dim  light  of  their  lantern,  they  found  him,  with  the  little 
note  about  his  neck,  all  safe  and  dry,  though  his  shaggy  fur 
was  dripping  with  muddy  water  from  the  creek  and  gullies 
tlirough  which  he  had  made  his  way  to  them.  One  affection- 
ate glance  of  his  great,  pathetic  eyes,  he  turned  upon  them, 
one  shiver  of  pain  passed  through  his  shaggy  frame  and  he 
lay  dead  at  their  feet. 

It  would  take  a  Roberts  or  a  Thompson  Seton  to  do  jus- 
tice to  tragedies  of  this  kind  in  the  animal  world,  though  the 
commonness  of  them  might  furnish  material  for  many  a 
writer.  The  mad  dog  craze,  or  superstition  as  some  deem 
it,  lies  at  the  bottom  of  many  of  them,  as  when  in  another 
instance  a  master  brutally  murdered  a  great  noble  New- 
foundland log  that  had  just  pulled  its  boy  playmate  from 
a  near-by  stream  and  rushed  home  all  wet  and  frothing  from 
the  effort,  to  bring  the  parents  to  the  shore  where  their  idol 
lay  insensible.  Leaping  upon  the  mother  in  its  eagerness, 
and  trying  to  seize  her  garments  and  draw  her  to  the  door 
the  father  deemed  it  mad,  and  with  a  fearful  blow  from  a 
club  broke  its  skull.  Yet  the  wounded  creature  managed  to 
niivke  the  poor  human  maniacs  understand  his  purpose  and 
follow  him  to  the  spot  where  their  little  one  lay  in  time  to 
save  him.  And  then,  while  they  worked  over  the  child,  he 
crept  off  into  the  woods  and  died. 

There  are  no  nobler  instances  of  devotion  and  heroism 
to  be  found  in  all  the  annals  of  mankind  than  stories  like 
this  that  roll  up  by  the  score  in  the  dog's  history.  It  fairly 
looks  as  though  Stevenson  might  have  gone  farther  than  the 
fur,  in  declaring  how  to  tell  dog  heroes  and  school  heroes 


38      A  Chapter  on  Dogs  and  Their  Service  to  Mankind 

apart.  But  the  darkest  feature  in  the  case  which  the  stu- 
dents of  it  unfold  is  the  one  which  Nansen  notes  when  he 
says  that  this  common  acceptance  of  the  dog's  life  servic^e 
and  sacrifice  tends  to  deaden  all  the  better  feelings  in  man. 
It  is  a  principle  which  applies  to  more  than  the  faithful 
dog  in  the  animal  kingdom.  The  growth  of  the  humane 
societies,  which  bespeak  protection  for  all  our  dumb  rela- 
tions, from  horses  to  birds  and  butterflies,  is  one  of  the 
most  promising  signs  of  the  age,  where  human  character  is 
concerned.  There  is  no  question  that  the  gentle,  peaceful 
soul  of  the  Oriental  is  closely  related  to  the  tenderness  to- 
ward all  creatures  great  and  small  that  his  faith  and  philos- 
ophy inculcate.  And  yet  the  belief  that  "the  soul  of  his 
grandam  might  haply  inhabit  a  bird,"  as  Shakespeare  puts 
it,  or  the  spirit  of  a  lost  love  float  past  him  on  the  wings 
of  a  butterfly,  is  no  more  reason  for  man's  respect  for  these 
lesser  creatures  than  the  Occidental  Christian  teaching,  that 
the  spirit  of  the  Great  Creator  breathes  through  every  form 
of  life  his  wonderful  wide  universe  can  show. 

Whoever  gives  even  a  passing  study  to  the  marvelous  pro- 
visions that  nature,  "which  is  God,"  makes  for  the  life  and 
protection  of  the  lower  creatures,  from  the  little  green  worm 
that  matches  its  leafy  coil,  to  the  striped  tiger  that  fits 
disguisingly  into  the  lights  and  shades  of  the  jungle,  must 
feel  some  measure  of  awe  at  the  mysterious  spirit  of  life  and 
love  visible  everywhere.  Thoreau  tells  us  that  the  light  in 
the  young  partridge's  eye  is  something  that  never  began 
with  the  bird,  but  declares  itself  co-eval  with  the  eternal. 
Another  writer  notes  how  the  shades  of  gray  and  ruddy 
brown  of  its  plumage  harmonize  with  the  tints  of  its  environ- 
ment and  protect  it  from  the  shafts  of  the  cruel  hunter. 
Thus,  is  it,  too,  with  the  little  brown  thrush  that  hides  itself 
in  the  thicket  or  hedge  row,  and 


A  Chapter  an  Dogs  and  Their  Serxnce  to  Mankind      39 

.Sings  each  song  twice  over, 

Lest  you  should  think  he  never  could  recapture 

The  first  fine  careless  rapture. 

It  is  noted  as  a  significant  mark  of  our  leaning  to  Ori- 
ental lines  of  thought  and  spirituality  that  this  kindliness 
toward  the  animal  creation  grows  more  marked  and  general. 
It  certainly  does  seem  significant  that,  as  in  one  case  men- 
tioned, a  business  man  of  a  busy  Western  city  should  turn 
aside  from  the  call  of  trade  to  have  a  man  arrested  for 
"setting  a  bulldog  on  a  poor  little  kitten"  and  that  a  muni- 
cipal court  should  fine  him  $50  for  the  act.  But,  indeed,  the 
root  of  the  matter  lies  far  back  of  race  lines  or  distinction 
in  the  better  heart  of  humanity,  and  in  that  Eden  dream  of 
unity  and  love  running  through  all  creation,  when  the  lion 
and  the  lamb  shall  lie  down  together  and  a  little  child  shall 
lead  them. 


THE  PLACE  OF  THE  HOME  IN  THE  PLAN  OF  LIFE 

FOOLS  build  houses  and  wise  men  live  in  them,"  said 
some  observing  soul  before  the  house-building  associa- 
tions had  tempted  family  men  to  reverse  the  proposition. 
Either  way,  however,  it  is  wrong.  Wise  or  foolish,  to  build 
your  own  house  and  live  in  it  is  the  proper  thing.  Thus  only 
can  you  fit  it  happily  to  all  your  follies,  or  adjust  it  to  the 
nice  requirement  of  your  higher  wisdom.  Furthermore,  thus 
only  can  you  attach  yourself  to  it  in  any  way  to  make  it 
other  than  a  pile  of  brick  and  mortar,  largely  devised  to 
tangle  your  steps  and  bruise  your  limbs  at  night  and  close 
about  you  with  more  or  less  prisonlike  gloom  by  day. 

Of  course,  this  supposes  that  you  put  something  more 
than  the  raw  material  into  the  house  you  build ;  and,  indeed, 
you  do,  or  you  wouldn't  build  it  at  all.  Plenty  of  heart 
and  sentiment  go  into  its  construction,  though  you  may 
scorn  to  admit  it,  and  Gilder's  exquisite  poem,  "How  My 
Chimney  Was  Builded,"  will  give  you  countenance  for  it  all. 
It  takes  a  little  time,  however,  to  resolve  this  part  of  the 
business  to  perfection,  but  when  it  is  done  your  house  will 
certainly  stand  for  something  not  to  be  computed  in  dollars 
and  cents. 

Well  may  the  sage  declare  that  "it  is  what  is  done  and  suf- 
fered in  the  house  that  has  the  profoundest  interest  for  us," 
for,  indeed,  it  is  in  "the  familiar  room"  that  love  and  death 
stand  waiting  to  do  their  utmost,  and  the  most  beautiful  ad- 
ventures of  life  are  found.  To  break  the  tie  and  turn 
from  the  familiar  room,  with  all  its  deep  and  sacred  associa- 

40 


( 


The  Place  of  the  Home  in  the  Plan  of  Life         41 

tionSj'is  no  light  thing,  therefore,  in  human  lives.  Almost,  as 
with  the  disrupting  of  ties  of  love  and  friendship,  some  "fair 
and  honorable  portion  of  existence  faUs  away"  and  we  be- 
come dislodged  "from  one  of  life's  dear  provinces." 

Hawtliorne's  picture  of  the  man  who  turns  his  back  on 
the  human  home  and  drops  into  mysterious  disappearances 
from  it,  as  becoming  in  the  end  an  outcast  of  the  universe, 
has  a  truth  worth  pondering  in  these  days  of  shifting  habi- 
tations and  apartment  houses,  "with  accommodations  like  a 
sleeping  car,"  and  as  many  stations  for  taking  leave  of  them. 
The  instability  of  all  life  and  character  follows  naturally  in 
the  wake  of  such  an  existence,  and  the  conditions  of  modern 
society  are  a  glowing  proof  of  it.  Skyscrapers,  that  bear 
less  relation  to  the  sky  than  the  hospitals,  and  "suite  homes" 
tliat  have  lio  element  of  sweetness  in  them,  fit  marriages 
"made  on  a  wager  on  a  ferry  boat,"  and  a  people  whom  the 
observing  Art  '^  sheikh  declared  are  "always  rushing  madly 
to  and  fro  as  if  a  jaguar  pursued  them."  He  goes  back  to 
his  skin  tent  in  the  desert  or  his  hut  in  the  forest,  we  are 
told,  from  his  New  York  visit  fully  convinced  that  his  way 
of  living  is  the  best.  "Better  the  trees  of  the  forest,"  he 
says,  "than  those  tall  buildings,  which  shut  out  the  sun" ;  and 
the  problem  that  he  carries  with  him  is,  "Why  do  men — 
weal'^hy  men,  I  am  told — imprison  themselves  in  those  build- 
ings?    Is  that  the  way  they  were  meant  to  live?" 

Thus  does  the  dwelling  house  which  Emerson  declares  the 
true  index  of  the  character  of  a  people  and  the  hope  of  a 
time  convince  the  savage  that  we  are  "a  nation  of  fools," 
and  the  only  thing  worth  having  at  our  hands  is  our  mar- 
velous cannon  whereby  they  may  be  able  to  keep  out  the 
rest  of  our  civilization."  And  meantime  the  anthropological 
societies  are  playing  into  the  hands  of  the  savage  by  show- 
ing that  the  ancient  pile  dwelling  was  of  so  noble  a  character 


42  The  Place  of  the  Home  in  the  Plan  of  Life 

as  to  furnish  the  model  for  the  beautiful  Greek  temples  of 
classic  renown.  In  Greece  and  many  other  parts  of  the 
world  during  the  stone  and  bronze  ages  they  tell  us  "the 
original  human  dwelling  was  a  house  on  piles,  which  also  was 
the  first  dwelling  of  the  gods,  so  that  the  wonderful  Greek 
temple,  with  its  classic  columns,  is  "a  highly  idealized  and 
conventionalized  expression  of  the  original  pile  dwelling"  of 
the  poor  barbarian  whose  ways  we  contemn.  Just  when 
men  began  to  let  their  houses  o'ermaster  them  and  become 
other  than  dwelling  places  of  the  gods  of  their  truer  being 
it  is  not  easy  to  say,  but  that  they  have  somehow  made 
the  blunder  and  reaped  sorrow  in  the  path  of  it  that  poet 
seems  to  understand  who  writes  of  his  young  home  builders : 

If  now  beyond  or  crib  or  cot 
Our  house  be  grown,  sure  I  know  not 
Why  griefs  should  grow  or  pleasures  pall 
Because  the  roof  tree  is  so  tall; 
Or  hearts  become  less  warm,  God  wot, 
For  you  and  me. 

The  eternal  fitness  of  things  no  doubt  has  much  to  do 
with  the  general  trouble,  and  individuality  in  homes,  as  well 
as  characters,  would  do  much  to  relieve  the  situation.  To 
devise  his  own  habitation  and  cling  to  it  while  the  tax  asses- 
sors allow  is  therefore  a  point  of  wisdom  in  the  case,  despite 
the  old  adage.  Next  to  that  there  is  something  in  choosing 
between  the  fool's  house  and  the  wise  man's,  however  similar 
the  exterior.  .  There  is  certainly  an  aroma  of  being,  as  well 
as  material  points  of  comfort  and  taste,  that  may  tell  in 
the  long  run  upon  the  occupant.  Perhaps  the  atmosphere 
of  one  devil  may  not  invite  seven  more  devils  to  keep  it  com- 
pany, as  in  the  ancient  story,  but  thoughts  that  are  things 
will  somehow  have  impressed  themselves  upon  the  surround- 


The  Place  of  the  Home  in  the  Plan  of  Life         43 

gs.  It  is  what  we  call  the  benediction  of  a  presence,  that 
ay  linger  longer  than  we  know  about  the  familiar  spot. 
Much  that  is  most  wonderful  and  interesting  in  the  whole 
aim  of  psychic  phenomena  bears  upon  this  subject.  Men- 
1  impressions  and  intense  thought  that  well-nigh  reach 
visible  form  and  action  are  held  to  account  for  strange 
things  in  human  houses.  They  stand  back  of  the  weird  tales 
of  haunting  spirits  that  have  so  long  clung  to  homes  of 
tragedy  and  blood.  How  far  they  reach  or  just  what  laws 
govern  them  the  psychical  societies  are  still  studying,  and 
till  they  make  it  out  it  may  be  well  to  take  the  chances  with 
the  better  thought  forces  even  here,  and  add  a  new  chapter 
,  to  the  "Saints'  Rest,"  for  the  edification  of  those  who  seek 
iBiromising  abiding  places  even  this  side  of  the  River  Jordan. 
If  ever  we  <^o  reach  the  time  when  the  mind  becomes  the 
sculptor  and  architect  in  the  world  of  matter,  the  fools  and 
wise  men  will  have  no  trouble  to  keep  themselves  apart  on  the 
house  proposition.  Certainly,  too,  an  interesting  unique- 
ness, instead  of  depressing  conformity,  will  attach  itself  to 
that  "dear  hut  our  home"  which  would  more  harmoniously 
coincide  with  nature's  wise  plan  in  fitting  every  creature  in 
her  realm  to  its  nest,  from  the  green  worm  in  its  leafy  bed 
to  the  chambered  nautilus  of  the  sea.  Indeed,  this  building 
of  its  ov,n  stately  mansions,  to  which  Holmes  invites  the  soul 
in  his  beautiful  poem,  may  yet  have  more  than  poetic  rela- 
tion to  the  human  family,  if  it  is  to  escape  the  effectual  clos- 
ing in  of  the  prison  house  of  time  to  which  society  condemns 
man  from  his  narrow-walled  crib  up. 

The  lack  of  means  that  shuts  the  majority  of  mankind 
away  from  such  elevating  influences  of  spacious  halls  and 
noble  domes  is  something  that  would  be  sore  indeed  if  nature 
did  not  in  a  measure  atone  for  it  by  offering  her  skyey 
dome  and  woodland  halls  to  prince  and  peasant  alike  who  will 


44*  The  Place  of  the  Home  in  the  Plan  of  Life 

seek  her  household  tree.  More  than  the  Bedouin  of  the  des- 
ert could  emphasize  man's  folly  in  turning  his  back  upon  his 
large  ancestral  inheritance  here  to  cling  to  his  cribbed  and 
cabined  life  in  tenement  rows  of  the  city.  To  conspire  with 
nature  to  secure  a  local  habitation  and  a  name  that  shall 
not  all  belie  him  is  the  only  resource  which  the  crushing 
forces  of  these  days  appear  to  allow  the  humbler  builder. 
Yet  the  privilege  is  a  larger  one  than  he  realizes.  As  the 
poet  tells  him,  "Thou  shalt  have  the  whole  land  for  thy  park 
and  manor,  the  sea  for  thy  bath.  The  woods  and  the  rivers 
thou  shalt  own,  and  thou  shalt  possess  that  wherein  others 
are  only  tenants  and  boarders." 

Thus  may  the  poorest  mortal  find  him  a  home  "majes- 
tically dressed"  and  appointed,  where  sun  and  air  and 
friendly  soil  shall  do  for  him  what  all  the  architects  and 
decorators  of  the  proud  cities  could  never  approach.  So 
wedded,  indeed,  are  the  cities  and  towns  to  their  conventional 
and  cramped  apartments  and  suites  that  even  a  poet  can 
not  let  his  soul  soar  beyond  them  without  accident  to  his 
best  efforts.  It  is  thoroughly  characteristic  of  the  time  that 
when  Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox  undertook  to  put  forth  her  sonnet 
with  the  significant  line,  "My  soul  is  a  lighthouse  keeper," 
the  up-to-date  printer  turned  it  out  in  his  morning  news- 
paper, "My  soul  is  a  light  housekeeper." 

As  a  case  of  more  truth  than  poetry  it  is  not  to  be  sur- 
passed either.  That  it  sizes  up  the  situation  in  many  re- 
spects is  pitifully  true.  The  days  are  long  gone  when  the 
modest  young  couple's  domestic  venture  could  fit  the  picture 
of  Ik  Marvels'  dream,  the  mo  re's  the  pity.  "Your  home, 
when  it  is  entered,  is  just  what  it  should  be,  quiet,  small,  with 
everything  she  wishes  and  nothing  more  than  she  wishes. 
The  sun  strikes  it  in  the  happiest  possible  way;  the  piano 
is  the  sweetest-toned  in  the  world ;  the  library  is  stocked  to 


i 


The  Place  of  the  Home  in  the  Plan  of  Life         45 


charm,  and  Madge,  that  blessed  wife,  is  there,  adorning 
and  giving  life  to  it  all."  The  lover  who  has  such  a  dream 
as  that  nowadays  is  advised  that  he  ought  never  to  marry, 
and  he  seems  disposed  to  accept  the  advice.  To  love  and 
then  to  part,  or  meet  in  some  "mutual  friend's"  mansion 
seems  safer  than  to  take  the  chances  in  the  sixth-story  flat 
with  the  money  shark's  lien  on  all  the  furniture.  Nor  is  it 
love  alone,  but  life  with  all  its  chances  and  refinements,  that 
goes  out  in  the  desolation  of  lodgings  and  light  housekeeping 
that  allows  no  lighthouse  outlook  for  the  soul.  There  is 
bitter  truth,  indeed,  in  the  sarcasm  of  a  modem  novelist  who 
says  of  his  heroine,  "When  her  relatives  learned  that  she 
lived  in  lodgings  and  would  probably  need  assistance  if  she 
^^cre  encouraged  to  dine  out,  they  had  the  delicacy  not  to 
intrude  upon  ber  sorrow." 

Heredity  and  environment  have  kept  the  scholars  busy  in 
trying  their  rival  claims  in  the  character  molding  of  the 
race,  though  the  meaning  of  the  home  in  the  latter  case 
has  never  been  fully  estimated.  But  that  homes  do  likewise 
bear  some  impress  of  their  occupants  that  poet  certainly 
believes  who  gives  us  this  neat  characterization  of  it : 

Mrs.  O'Hara  has  a  house 

That  seem  to  say  O!  O! 

The  blinds  all  off,  the  gate  askew. 

Opening  surprised  big  eyes  at  you. 

But  Miss  Diedamia's  little  cottage, 
Its  mouth  is  thin  and  gray. 
And  the  closed  shutters  frown  at  you 
And  murmur.  Go  away. 

Our  house  is  pleasantest  of  all, 
With  poppies  down  the  walk, 
And  hollyhocks  that  lean  to  you; 


46  The  Place  of  the  Home  in  the  Plan  of  Life 

The  porch  has  arms  that  reach  right  out, 
And  the  knocker  seems  to  talk. 

At  twilight,  when  I  hurry  home, 
My  dripping  skates  across  my  back. 
The  twinkling  windows  smile  at  me 
And  I  smile  back. 


THE  FEAR  OF  LIFE  AND  ITS  EVIL  EFFECTS 

THE  paradox  of  living  which  never  knows  life  is  not  a 
new  one  in  the  story  of  man's  wrestle  with  that  "spangle 
of  existence"  allotted  him  here.  Of  late,  however,  the  voice, 
without  both  temple  and  tavern,  cries  more  insistently 
against  the  loss  entailed  by  the  closed  door  and  man's  com- 
plicity in  it. 


You  know  how  little  while  we  have  to  stay. 
And  once  departed,  may  return  no  more, 


L.„.,.„.,„..,...„. 

■Rng  murmur  against  mortal  cowardice  that  dares  not  force 
Hthe  lock  is  in  all  the  air. 

w  <«You  are  the  dreams  we  do  not  dare  to  dream"  is  the 
[  gentle  challenge  of  the  poet,  and  a  nation  "afraid  of  life"  is 
the  bold  charge  of  the  critic,  where  the  last  chance  to  taste 
of  life  1"»  all  its  freedom  and  fullness  has  been  offered  man- 
kind. 

Ik  With  no  more  worlds  to  conquer,  it  is  sad  to  read  that 
i  Americans  have  missed  their  opportunity  and  through  a 
'''  "fear  of  life"  involved  themselves  and  their  literature  in  a 
"labyrinth  of  gentle  fancy,  of  wan  emotion,  of  love  without 
passion  and  faith  without  rapture."  Especially  sad,  too, 
when  some  at  least  of  their  literary  forefathers  certainly 
started  them  out  in  the  right  path.  Was  it  not  "the  prim- 
itive and  enduring"  that  appealed  to  Thoreau,  when  he  said : 
"I  went  to  the  woods  because  I  wished  to  live  deliberately, 

47 


48  The  Fear  of  Life  and  Its  EvU  Effects 

to  front  only  the  essential  facts  of  life.  I  wanted  to  live 
deep  and  suck  out  all  the  marrow  of  life."  Was  it  not  life 
in  its  very  essence  that  Emerson  considered  when  he  said  if 
man  "plant  himself  indomitably  on  his  instincts,  and  there 
abide,  the  huge  world  will  come  around  to  him." 

Alas,  when  did  American  instincts  grow  too  tame  and 
domestic  for  any  large  world  of  life  or  literature  to  come 
round  to  them?  For  this  you  will  note,  far  more  than  the 
cry  of  commercialism,  is  the  sin  against  genius  and  force 
which  the  subtler  critics  lay  at  their  door.  The  loss  of 
"primal  passions"  in  the  free  and  primal  atmosphere  of  a 
new  world  is  something  for  which  the  children  of  light  and 
literature  find  it  hard  to  forgive  them.  To  talk  of  "the 
stainless  integrity  of  their  private  lives"  in  the  face  of 
tameness  in  their  literature  is  more  than  pathetic  and  amus- 
ing to  the  elect  of  letters.  It  is  like  seeing  a  star  go  out  in 
a  new  heaven  prepared  for  it,  and  a  tallow  dip  of  modest 
home  construction  take  the  place  of  it. 

Naturally  enough  Puritanism,  with  its  narrow  creeds  and 
forms  and  innumerable  proprieties  and,  above  all,  its  "New 
England  conscience"  was  held  largely  responsible  for  it.  For 
the  majority  of  these  broader  critics  appear  to  think,  with 
Stevenson,  that  "the  person,  man  or  dog,  who  has  a  con- 
science is  eternally  condemned  to  some  degree  of  humbug  and 
the  sense  of  law  in  their  members  precipitates  them  toward  a 
frozen  and  affected  bearing."  The  utmost  "abandon  of 
life"  is  the  point  insisted  upon  and  that  our  greatest  genius 
in  fiction,  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  used  the  conscience  motto 
for  his  intense  and  unparalleled  probing  at  the  heart  of  life 
is  a  phenomenon  before  which  they  confess  themselves 
wrapped  in  wonder. 

Some  Villon  of  the  plains,  some  Balzac  to  record  "the  pas- 
sion of  a  desert"  is  what  they  demand  and,  lacking  this,  even 


r 


Tlie  Fear  of  Life  and  Its  Evil  Effects  49 


Whitman,  with  his  bold  dash  at  the  underside  of  things  and 
yearning  for  "the  unanchored  and  driving  free"  did  not  lift 
us  above  the  fear  of  life  into  the  atmosphere  of  the  immortals. 
The  new  world  inheritance  that  brought  neither  a  new  pan- 
theism nor  a  new  pain  to  interpret  or  augment  the  still  sad 
music  of  humanity,  nor  yet  a  life  free  as  the  wild  birds  to 
defy  all  pain  or  fear,  seemed  a  wasted  splendor,  a  lost  chance 
to  recover  for  man  the  universal  spirit,  the  universal  joy. 
That  Thoreau  declared  nature  herself  "vast,  drear  and  in- 
human," not  to  be  associated  with  man  in  any  Wordsworth- 
ian  sympathy  or  tenderness,  does  not  preclude  the  idea  that 
somehow  in  the  unprofaned  deeps  of  the  primeval  forest  or 
the  vast  solitude  of  the  hills  the  American  man  should  have 
come  upon  the  "hidden  deity"  of  elemental  life  who  would 

Ifeelieve  him  of  all  l-'s  fears,  and  above  all  of  his  pestiferous 
lonscience. 
I  That  instead  man  settled  down  to  puritan  prayer  meet- 
ings, blue  laws  and  patient  psalms  of  life  is  something  for 
which  the  bohemian  soul  of  genius  and  art  can  scarcely  for- 
give him.  And  yet  there  may  still  be  hope  for  him.  If 
abandon  to  desire  and  defiance  of  troublesome  laws  lead  the 
way  to  native  force  and  passion  a  veritable  Olympus  may 
soon  be  set  up  in  our  midst.  The  only  trouble  is  that  by  all 
the  laws  of  art  genius  must  know  the  way  from  the  pit  to 
the  Empyrean,  and  a  majority  of  those  who  go  down  to  test 
the  tartarean  shivers  lose  themselves  in  the  operation,  and 
tlius  leave  the  divine  comedy  of  life  but  partially  revealed 
to  us.  No  wonder,  either,  when  the  very  expression  "aban- 
don of  life"  commonly  carries  with  it  some  sinister  idea  of 
lawlessness  in  darker  desires  and  passions,  instead  of  the 
pure  and  enduring  joys  which  ever  lie  at  the  heart  of  life. 
A  lingering  vision  of  the  primitive  lords  of  life  and  liberty 
faring  forth  to  seize  feudal  castle  or  Sabine  women  as  the 


50  The  Fear  of  Life  and  Its  Evil  Effects 

native  impulse  seized  them,  goes  still  with  this  high  theory 
of  life's  abandon. 

That  the  essence  of  life  is  divine,  and  the  true  fearlessness 
of  life  grows  out  of  that  truth,  is  something  not  dwelt  upon 
by  the  majority  of  our  critics.  Yet  here  is  the  real  potency 
of  their  demand  for  a  brave  facing  of  life,  to  the  utmost,  in 
the  creature  of  force  or  genius,  and  their  charge  that  a  fear 
of  life  can  pale  all  the  fires  of  thought,  being  or  achieving  in 
any  nation  or  individual.  "Life  means  intensely  and  it 
means  good,"  said  one  of  the  mightiest  sons  of  genius  who 
ever  braved  the  sun  and  tried  the  stuff  of  life  through  every 
glint  of  gold  or  dross,  the  highest  or  the  lowest  phase  of 
being  could  bring  to  it,  and  to  fling  one's  self  into  the  life 
current  with  that  faith  is  to  welcome  the  rough  water  as 
well  as  the  smooth,  and  count  every  human  experience  worth 
all  it  cost — aye,  cover  the  suffering  and  the  sinning  that 
are  the  eye-openers  of  the  soul.  "The  unlit  lamp  and  the 
ungirt  loin,"  are  the  only  deadly  forms  of  fear  such  vision 
recognizes.  To  fear  to  battle  for  his  soul's  desire,  his  life's 
set  prize,  be  it  what  it  will,  is  the  coward  faltering  at  the 
heart  of  life,  which  blights  and  kills.  It  is  not  strange, 
either,  that  Browning  places  it  in  the  domain  of  love,  since 
love  he  held  to  be  the  grand  prize  of  life,  though  one  which 
mortal  cowardice  and  weakness  have  most  abused  and  for- 
feited. To  dare  to  be  true  to  love,  when  the  world  and  its 
ways  stood  at  all  in  the  path  of  it,  has  apparently  been  given 
only  to  the  great  ones  of  the  earth,  while  yet  there  is  nothing 
surer  than 

That  to  turn  from  love  is  life's  one  treason 
That  treads  down  all  the  suns. 

There  is  a  place  where  fear  of  life  does  more  than  im- 
poverish literature  and  a  deeper  cry  than  the  artist's  might 


I 

I 


The  Fear  of  Life  and  Its  Evil  Effects  51 

well  be  raised  against  it.  Of  course,  too,  it  is  the  perfect 
love  that  casteth  out  fear,  which  is  to  save  us  in  the  end,  and 
it  may  be  that  the  very  upheavals  of  society  in  the  line  of 
divorce  and  marriage  are  on  the  search  for  it,  although  it 
is  difficult  to  trace  such  end  in  either  the  life  or  literature  of 
the  hour.  One  thing  is  sure,  however,  and  that  is  that  it  is 
not  the  poets  and  writers  who  drop  us  down  in  the  mire  of 
the  strife,  or  carry  us  back  to  the  brute  instincts  of  crea- 
tion, and  whisper  "Here's  life,  be  not  afraid  of  it,"  who  will 
purge  us  of  our  coward  fears.  "Half  dust,"  but  also  "half 
deity,"  life's  life  only  as  it  includes  the  divine. 

Live  for  eternity  as  well  as  time,  and  the  fearlessness  and 
joy  of  the  "perfect  round"  is  assured  to  you.  Especially  if 
you  do  not  try  tr  i-everse  the  method  and  stake  all  of  eternity 
upon  an  hour  of  time ;  nor  yet  like  Atlas  to  carry  the  world 
on  your  shoulders  in  the  wrestle  with  time.  You  can  smile 
at  one  man's  failure,  even  your  own,  if  sure  that  another 
hand  will  bring  the  desired  victory.  "Atlas  was  just  a  gen- 
tleman with  a  protracted  nightmare,"  says  Stevenson,  and 
so  is  any  single  individual  who  "coddles  himself  into  the 
fancy  "^hat  his  own  work  is  of  exceptional  importance"  and 
fears  life's  utmost  ability  to  carry  it  on  to  any  worthy  end 
without  him.  Indeed,  the  dignity  and  grandeur  of  life  in 
its  far-reaching  ends  and  fulfillments  is  something  that  glori- 
fies every  participant  in  it,  and,  though  we  are  in  a  measure 
novices  and  "vagabonds  in  the  great  universe  of  power,"  yet 
there  is  nothing  to  fear,  since  history  and  science  alike  show 
us  that  "our  little  wherry  is  taken  in  tow  by  the  ship  of 
the  Great  Admiral,  who  knows  the  way  and  has  the  force 
to  draw  men  and  states  and  planets  to  their  good." 

The  primal  passions  to  which  the  critics  look  for  any 
strength  in  life  or  genius  were  lit  at  the  divine  fire  of  being, 
and  the  white  flame  at  that  altar  needs  no  taint  of  any  lower 


52  The  Fear  of  Life  and  Its  EvU  Effects 

life  to  give  it  force.  The  "stainless  integrity  of  a  private 
life"  ought  not  to  militate  against  the  fiercest  fires  of  genius, 
and  if  it  seems  to  it  must  be  because  the  world  and  the  critics 
have  not  yet  discovered  what  stainless  integrity  in  human 
life  and  relations  means.  We  may  grant  them  frankly  that 
it  does  not  mean^'Hhe  mildly  domestic"  nor  conventionally 
proper,  but  even  then  a  white  margin  is  left  for  the  high 
passions  to  disport  themselves  in,  which  Dante  knew,  but 
minor  writers  have  lost  entirely. 

Who  will  restore  to  us  the  lost  clew,  who  will  give  us  the 
"Vita  Nuova"  which  shall  trace  life  and  love  to  their  in- 
tensest  emotions,  j^et  leave  the  celestial  skies  of  Eden  inno- 
cence and  purity  enfolding  them  both?  The  lion  of  love  is 
hardly  a  fit  animal  for  a  domestic  pet,  the  modern  writers  tell 
us,  and  the  social  records  seem  to  sustain  them,  but  what 
better  they  do  with  him  in  turning  him  loose  in  the  company 
now  sought  for  him,  it  is  not  becoming  to  consider.  Some 
Dante  or  Browning  to  reinstate  love  on  his  own  high  throne 
is  a  prime  need  of  society,  and  then  the  life  philosopher  may 
more  safely  say  to  us  with  Fichte,  "What  thou  lovest  thou 
livest."  Perhaps  the  fear  of  life  will  drop  away,  even  from 
strait-laced  America,  and,  without  the  asset  of  broken  hearts 
or  broken  morals,  our  poets  may  retrieve  their  lost  inher- 
itance, and  be  able  yet  to  tell  the  new  world's  story  of 

A  life  intense. 

Where  not  a  beam,  nor  air,  nor  leaf  is  lost. 

But  hath  a  part  of  being. 

Yet,  if  the  critics  fail  to  "get  their  money's  worth  of  life" 
out  of  the  epic  story,  there  is  still  a  whisper  from  the  last 
rim  of  the  golden  west,  that  "we  are  caught  in  the  coil  of 
a  god's  romance,"  and  must  wait  the  sequel  from  afar. 


THE  VISIBLE  AND  THE  INVISIBLE  FORCES  IN 
THE  GAME  OF  LIFE 

LIFE  as  a  game,  death  as  an  adventure,  is  a  philosoph- 
ical way  of  taking  the  whole  "scheme  incomprehensible," 
which  puzzled  humanity  more  and  more  inclines  to.  One  of 
the  latest  books  dealing  with  the  eternal  mystery  calls  death 
"the  great  adventure,"  and  pictures  the  fearless  and  eager 
interest  which  a  perfectly  wholesome  nature  might  take  in 
it  from  such  a  viewpoint.  The  idea  is  not  a  new  one,  either, 
though  elaborated  in  an  unusual  way.  More  people  than 
the  writers  know  have  faced  death  in  the  spirit  of  the  beloved 
Uncle  Remus,  who  only  whispered,  "I  have  always  been  curi- 
ous to  know  wliat  was  on  the  other  side,"  as  he  passed  over 
with  a  gentle  smile  into  the  face  of  his  wife.  Attempts  to 
solve  the  mystery,  either  on  the  part  of  science  or  religion, 
have  tended  directly  to  cloud  this  pleasing  speculation  in 
it  without  in  any  way  lifting  the  veil  that  obscured  it.  In 
general  they  are  of  a  character  best  illustrated  by  the  story 
of  the  two  men  each  of  whom  was  asked  as  to  the  existence 
of  hell.  The  first  man  being  a  plain  unlettered  sort  of  per- 
son, simply  answered,  "I  don't  know,"  and  was  promptly  set 
down  as  an  agnostic,  a  heretic  and  a  dangerous  individual. 
The  other,  who  was  high  of  brow,  wrote  out  his  answer  in 
full.  He  took  5000  words  to  introduce  his  subject  and  then 
70,000  words  to  tell  what  the  first  man  had  told  in  three, 
and  he  was  hailed  as  a  philosopher,  an  uplifter,  and  a  leader. 
To  air  their  supposed  wisdom  or  their  doctrine  is  about  all 
the  would-be-teachers  in  this  unknown   realm  can  do,   and 

53 


54         Visible  and  Invisible  Forces  in  Game  of  Life 

that  it  leaves  the  matter  about  as  it  found  it  is  as  true  to-daj 
as  when  the  Persian  poet  tells  us  "I  heard  the  great  argu- 
ment" of  doctor  and  saint,  about  it  and  about — but,  ever- 
more, "came  out  by  the  same  door  wherein  I  went." 

From  first  to  last  life  is  a  riddle  and  guessing  at  the  riddle 
is  a  large  part  of  the  entertainment  it  offers.  That  death 
changes  this  order  of  things  and  solves  all  life's  puzzles  in 
some  fixed  state  either  of  bliss  or  woe,  is  a  view  of  the  great 
change  accepted  by  many,  but  more  or  less  appalling  to  all, 
and  wholly  unwarranted  by  any  logic  of  happy  being  known 
on  earth.  That  it  will  take  ages  on  ages  to  find  out  what  "lies 
on  the  other  side"  is  more  probably  the  truth  of  the  busi- 
ness if  we  are  not  all  to  drop  into  some  stagnant  pool  or 
monotonous  plane  of  existence  where  no  blaze  of  eternal 
glory  could  atone  for  the  interest  and  zest  of  the  game  we 
have  left  behind  us  on  the  uncertain  earth.  That  "man  is 
hurled  from  change  to  change,  his  soul's  wings  never  furled" 
or  sure  of  the  next  peak  to  be  reached,  is  the  more  cheering 
view  of  the  situation  that  progressive  spirits  like  Browning 
take  of  it.  The  main*  difference  there  and  here  may  be  that 
the  eternal  wonder  as  to  how  anything  is  "going  to  turn 
out"  will  be  accompanied  by  some  sustaining  sense  that  it 
wiU  turn  out  all  right.  The  difiiculty  of  laying  hold  of  that 
comforting  assurance  in  this  crooked  world,  is  what  hurts 
the  game,  although  it  may  give  it  a  kind  of  desperate  zest 
the  good  angels  know  nothing  about.  It  is  possible,  how- 
ever, to  put  a  certain  faith  in  what  men  call  destiny,  that 
will  give  one  boldness  and  indeed  delight  in  playing  the 
game  of  life  even  when  it  goes  against  him.  In  his  defini- 
tion of  romance  a  recent  writer  brings  out  this  point  in  a 
significant  manner.  "Romance,"  he  says,  "is  a  chain  of  cir- 
cumstances which  out  of  the  infinite  chaos  links  two  living 
things   together  for   a  definite  end — that  end,  which   is   a 


Visible  and  Invisible  Forces  in  Game  of  Life         55 

pendant  upon  the  chain  itself,  and  may  be  a  heart  with  a 
lock  of  hair  inside,  or  a  cross  or  a  dagger  or  a  crown.  But 
whatever  it  is  you  may  know  that  end  was  meant  to  be  and 
for  a  very  good  reason." 

This  knowledge  that  you  are  in  the  hands  of  destiny 
"gives  you  boldness."  It  carries  a  sense  that  you  are  meant 
to  meet  the  people  and  circumstances  that  come  in  your  path, 
and  hence  are  not  acting  entirely  of  your  own  puny  self  in 
taking  the  preposterous  steps  and  chances  that  your  bold 

|B  encounter  with  them  might  seem  to  imply.     Of  course  this 

'      is  little  more  tha"   chat  faith  in  the  ultimate  good  and  man's 

appointed  part  in  it,  which  saints  as  well  as  philosophers 

have  been  recommending  through  all  ages.     But,  resolving 

I^B  the  whole  business  into  a  romance,  filling  it  with  the  "rigors 
of  the  game,"  is  not  commonly  a  part  of  the  philosophic  plan, 
nor  yet  the  theologic,  although  to  be  sure  Bunyan  did  send 
his  pilgrims  out  with  something  of  the  zest  for  a  fray,  and 
the  Six  Galahads  of  righteous  renown  have  played  a  thrilling 
part  in  the  pages  of  life  and  literature.  But  in  fact,  it  is 
the  Young  Lochinvars  of  little  thought  beyond  their  own 
prowess  and  romantic  desires,  who  find  the  battle  and  the 
game  of  life  most  zestful,  while  those  who  dwell  upon  the 
paradise  to  come  or  "heed  the  rumble  of  a  distant  drum" 
very  shortly  fall  out  of  the  enjoyment  of  the  game  and  con- 
sequently bear  no  very  effective  part  in  it.  This,  of  course, 
is  why  observing  souls  have  proposed  to  drop  them,  saints 
and  sinners  alike,  out  of  the  earthly  being  and  leave  only 
those  young  spirits  that  could  keep  the  zest  of  the  game, 
the  romance  of  the  unexpected,  whether  good  or  bad,  alive 
in  the  human  arena. 

It  may  be  directly  in  the  interests  of  these  that  life,  as 
an  endless  adventure,  is  the  livelier  note  sounded  from  pulpit 
as  well  as  lecture  halls,  and  the  soothing  doctrine  of  under- 


56         Visible  and  Invisible  Forces  in  Game  of  Life 

lying  good  directs  itself  more  to  the  race  than  the  individual 
who  is  left  to  play  the  cards  or  weapons  dealt  out  to  him 
with  the  old  uncertainty  whether  he  Is  to  win  or  lose  in  the 
present  battle.  That  there  is  always  a  chance  to  win  on 
the  Lord's  side  is  the  standing  encouragement  held  out  to 
him  though  he  may  see  many  an  Apolyon  carry  off  the  vic- 
tory in  single  combat.  While  success  or  failure  in  any  field 
depends  still  upon  circumstances  that  "may  leap  out  of 
infinite  chaos,"  neither  the  doctrine  of  the  ultimate  good,  nor 
the  pleasing  idea  of  the  master  man,  can  destroy  the  element 
of  chance  the  situation  holds  and  the  real  interest  of  the 
game  demands.  And  as  all  this  exists  as  truly  in  age  as 
youth,  with  a  world  of  unexplored  chances  and  prizes  within 
it,  it  is  certainly  strange  that  the  spirit  of  adventure  so  soon 
dies  out  in  human  breasts.  To  rouse  it  to  fresh  life,  and 
carry  it  even  beyond  the  shadowy  pall  of  death,  is  a  prime 
step  in  the  modern  movement  to  turn  back  the  powers  of 
darkness  and  despair  that  have  so  long  spoiled  the  wonder 
game  of  life  for  all  beyond  the  earliest  stages  of  it. 

''Getting  old  is  not  a  necessity.  It  is  merely  a  bad 
habit,"  says  Ellen  Key,  and  the  worst  of  the  habit  lies  in 
the  acceptance  of  the  old  idea  that  there  comes  a  time  when 
life  has  nothing  more  to  offer  and  memory  of  the  past  must 
take  the  place  of  eager  hope  in  the  future.  No  wonder  that 
life  grows  "weary,  stale,  fiat  and  unprofitable,"  to  those 
who  fall  out  thus  weakly  in  any  stage  of  the  game.  "Oh, 
the  brief  and  unctuous  self-confidence  of  those  who  have  not 
yet  found  out,"  says  one  cynic  in  the  face  of  youth's  glowing 
assurance.  But  oh,  the  self-destroying  assurance  of  those 
who  think  they  have  found  out,  and  hold  dead  sea  apples 
the  fruit  of  life's  tree.  The  boy  will  never  become  truly 
father  to  the  man  till  all  the  radiant  faith  and  hope  in  the 
unknown  world  before  him  remains  a  potent  force  and  charm 


Visible  and  Invisible  Forces  in  Game  of  Life         57 

of  age  as  of  happy  youth.  A  "boy  who  keeps  on  growing" 
in  a  world  that  keeps  on  offering  the  wonderful  and  unex- 
pected at  every  stage,  is  what  the  ideal  human  being  must 
be  to  fulfill  the  life  of  adventure  prepared  for  him.  A 
world  that  is  "all  gates,  all  opportunities,  strings  of  ten- 
sion waiting  to  be  struck,"  need  never  grow  stale  and  unpro- 
fitable to  any  being  upon  its  shores  nor  can  the  oldest  or  the 
youngest  of  its  explorers  ever  tell  what  hour  a  new  conti- 
nent may  loom  on  its  horizon,  or  a  Halley's  comet  flame 
into  view  that  slmll  blazon  his  name  in  the  splendors  of  im- 
mortal youth  upon  the  shining  sky.  The  testimony  of  Victor 
Hugo  is  the  one  most  gloriously  in  point  for  those  who  would 
secure  life  from  the  drear  sentence  too  often  pronounced 
upon  it  as  a  tale  that  is  told.  "Winter  is  on  my  head,"  he 
writes,  "but  spring  is  in  my  heart.  I  breathe  at  this  hour, 
the  fragrance  of  the  lilacs,  the  violets  and  the  roses,  as  at 
twenty  years,  the  earth  gives  me  its  generous  sap,  and 
heaven  lights  me  with  the  reflection  of  unknown  worlds.  It  is 
marvelous,  yet  simple.  It  is  a  fairy  tale  and  it  is  history." 
That  forces  of  good  and  evil  battle  together  in  this  fairy 
tale  of  life  and  adventure  honest  thinkers  like  Hugo  have 
been  fain  to  admit,  and  that  man's  place  in  the  giant  play 
of  these  invisible  forces  is  a  precarious  and  uncertain  one. 
But  the  improvement  the  Christian  philosopher  made  upon 
the  pagan  one,  was  in  the  larger  faith  in  the  good  than  the 
evil  power  at  the  back  of  the  game.  It  increased  that  bold- 
ness in  the  player  which  the  novelist  submits  is  essential  to 
the  romance  of  life,  as  well  as  the  courageous  encounter  with 
it  where  little  romance  seems  left.  The  stoicism  of  the  pagan 
as  against  the  faith  of  the  Christian  is  well  symbolized  in 
the  contrast  between  the  sphinx  of  destiny  and  the  god  of 
love,  at  the  back  of  the  two  different  systems.  An  invisible 
and   inscrutable   power  controlling  the  field,   however  man 


58         Visible  and  Invisible  Forces  in  Game  of  Life 

handled  his  forces,  was  an  acknowledged  point  in  both  cases, 
but  it  made  a  difference  whether  ruthless  fate  or  loving 
purpose  was  behind  that  power.  The  pleasure  in  the  life 
game  could  only  come  with  the  full  consciousness  that  no 
mere  demon  of  ill  or  stern  fatality  held  the  stakes,  or  dealt 
the  cards,  but  one  who  meant  fair  play  and  endless  chance 
for  every  participator  in  the  game.  It  is  only  thus  that 
the  odds  of  any  game  can  be  taken  with  zest  and  pleasure. 
Loaded  dice  soon  doom  a  game,  but  the  uncertain  turn  of 
the  honest  dice  gives  all  the  interest  to  it.  "The  uncertain 
factors  of  success,  the  entrance  of  accidents,  the  intrusion  of 
the  unforeseen  make  life  worth  living,"  says  one  advocate 
of  the  scheme  of  things  about  us.  But  it  took  a  large  faith 
in  the  being  who  holds  the  balance  of  the  unforeseen  to  con- 
vince him  of  this. 

It  is  a  significant  feature  in  the  new  theology  and  the 
new  psychology  that  luck  and  providence  are  becoming 
closely  united.  The  visible  and  invisible  forces  in  the  game 
of  life  are  coming  into  more  intelligible  relations  to  each 
other.  Mental  science  is  taking  a  strong  hand  in  the  game. 
That  man  "is  one  with  life's  almighty  source,"  is  a  truth  of 
the  ages  that  is  rendering  the  ancient  chance  more  marvel- 
ously  sweet  and  alluring.  Life  is  an  endless  adventure,  a 
voyage  of  discovery  in  which  "good  luck"  and  "God  speed" 
are  kin  notes  the  best  of  the  preachers  combine  in  their 
"shouts  of  cheer"  to  the  voyagers.  "The  devil  for  luck"  is 
a  lost  note  in  the  game.  Man's  own  vision  has  outstretched 
that  stake,  and  writes  the  distance  from  it  in  the  poet's  lines 
for  the  year's  calendar. 

Enough  to  know  of  chance  and  luck. 
The  stroke  we  choose  to  strike  is  struck ; 
The  deed  we  slight  will  slighted  be. 
In  spite  of  all  necessity. 


Visible  and  Invisible  Forces  in  Game  of  Life         59 

Man's  free  will  and  a  loving  God's  sovereignty  are  work- 
ing out  the  problem  .of  life  along  more  glorious  lines  than 
the  warring  theologians  over  the  seemingly  conflicting  doc- 
trines ever  dreamed  of. 


ABOUT  HEROES 

THERE  is  no  comfort  after  all  in  trying  to  dispose  of 
the  historic  heroes  who  bestride  the  world  to  the  em- 
barrassment of  smaller  men,  unless  we  can  be  sure  that  the 
legendary  ones  will  not  push  into  the  ranks  of  veritable  his- 
tory to  take  their  places.  No  sooner  have  we  relieved  our- 
selves of  Jefferson,  Hamilton,  Washington  and  "ze  great 
Christopher  Columbo"  than  up  leaps  Hiawatha  as  the  veri- 
table father,  not  of  one,  but  six  nations,  and  possessed  of  all 
the  sublime  virtues  of  which  our  own  illustrious  fathers  have 
been  denuded  by  the  writers.  It  is  fair  to  state  that  it  is 
the  restless  German  intellect,  not  the  American,  that  has 
done  this.  Longfellow  knew  enough  to  meet  the  question. 
"Whence  these  stories,  whence  these  legends  and  traditions," 
with  the  "misty  odors  of  the  forest"  and  the  whisperings  of 
the  west  wind.  It  is  a  German  scholar  deep  in  the  mysteries 
of  ethnology  and  anthropology  who  has  tracked  them  to 
the  remnant  of  the  Onondagas  and  learned  from  the  lips  of 
the  old  chief  at  their  New  York  reservation  the  veritable 
story  upon  which  they  are  founded.  This  settles  it  for 
Hiawatha,  and  the  beauty  of  the  verification  is  that  not  a 
virtue  or  a  grace  which  the  finest  fancy  of  the  romancer 
could  weave  about  him  is  lost  in  the  reality. 

From  the  hour  when  he  took  the  fair  Minnehaha  from 
the  tribe  of  the  Mohawks  to  the  day  when  he  broke  from  his 
long  mourning  for  her  loss,  to  meet  the  call  of  his  people  and 
fix  the  totem  pole  for  the  clans,  not  a  breath  of  wrong  or 
reproach  stained  the  glory  of  this  "plumed  knight"  or  chief 

60 


About  Heroes  61 

of  American  history.  True  to  one  affection  and  one  pure 
purpose  of  uplifting  his  people,  he  buried  the  sorrow  of  his 
life  in  his  bosom,  and  having  bound  the  confederacy  to  keep 
in  his  absence  the  constitution  he  had  framed  for  them,  dis- 
appeared, like  the  old  Greek  patriot  and  lawmaker,  to  return 
no  more.  "In  the  glory  of  the  sunset ;  in  the  purple  mists 
of  evening,"  verily  did  his  white  canoe  vanish  from  the  strain- 
ing eyes  of  the  tribes,  and  here  we  are  up  against  a  hero 
whom  no  probing  of  the  story  can  besmirch.  More  than 
that  to  the  wliite  man  is  the  moral  and  to  civilization  the 
reproach.  Could  &ny  of  "them"  prying  scholars  and  "fool 
literary  fellers'*  do  worse  for  us  than  that.^  Would  that 
Owen  Seaman  would  spear  them  all  with  a  jest,  and  let  us 
have  white  lambs  for  heroes  that  are  not  quite  so  "ominous" 
when  served  up  with  the  mint  sauce  of  present  society. 

Nevertheless,  since  philosophy  seems  to  insist  that  all  our 
ideas  are  born  of  experience  and  no  conception  of  life  or 
character  beyond  the  range  of  experience  is  possible  to  the 
mind,  .ve  may  have  to  take  all  the  aureoled  heroes  of  song 
atid  story  as  men  and  brothers  yet.  There  is  no  denying, 
cither,  that  when  we  do  come  upon  them  in  the  ranks  of  com- 
mon life  they  surpass  anything  that  the  romancers  have 
ever  claimed  for  them.  We  can  afford  to  lose  all  the  Norse 
heroes  of  fiction,  whom  John  Fiske's  searching  work,  "New 
France  and  New  England,"  wipes  out  in  the  glory  of  those 
humble  men  and  maidens  of  authentic  history  that  he  raises 
up  to  stem  the  tide  of  savagery,  tyranny,  superstition  and 
wrong  in  the  new  land.  What  are  a  hundred  Jeannie  Deans, 
either,  besides  the  almost  unknown  woman,  Mary  Easty,  who 
faced  all  the  powers  of  court  and  clergy  in  a  trial  for  witch- 
craft with  protestations  of  its  falseness,  and  the  dying 
prayer,  "I  petition  not  to  your  honors  for  my  own  life,  for  I 
know  I  must  die.     But  by  my  own  innocency  I  know  you 


62  About  Heroes 

are  in  the  wrong  way."  There  are  Heroic  souls  and  exalted 
spirits  enough  in  real  life  to  make  us  uneasy  in  our  vanities, 
without  going  to  fiction  for  them.  The  only  thing  we  can 
ask  of  the  searchers  after  their  types  or  prototypes,  is  that 
they  shall  not  be  thrust  upon  us  too  ruthlessly  before  we  are 
able  to  bear  them.  It  was  a  solid  comfort  to  know  that  the 
new  Enoch  Arden  of  Meriden,  Conn.,  who  recently  came  from 
the  Klondike  to  gaze  silently  through  the  garden  gate  upon 
the  fair  wife  Annie,  who,  believing  him  dead,  was  playing 
"little  wife"  to  another,  went  way  back  to  Alaska  and  sat 
down,  without  upsetting  the  gracefully  shifting  currents  of 
love  and  matrimony  of  our  day.  And  what  if  he  did  hear 
his  baby  boy  calling  another  "papa.''"  There  is  a  good  Eng- 
lishman not  unknown  to  society  who  always  tells  his  wife 
that  in  case  of  the  "divided  path  of  development"  she  can 
have  both  the  boys  to  dispose  of  as  she  pleases.  Enoch 
Arden  should  know  that  in  these  days  love 

Fulfills  itself  in  many  ways 

Lest  one  good  custom  should  corrupt  the  world. 

It  is  only  when  some  fierce  Zola  rises  up  to  cry,  "I  accuse," 
to  the  ruling  orders  that  trouble  arises,  and  even  then  small 
harm  is  done  unless  he  dies  and  shows  them  a  white-souled 
hero  of  truth  and  justice  at  the  back  of  it.  It  is  these  just 
men  everywhere  that  disturb  the  dreams  of  kings,  and  when 
society  has  spent  ages  in  banishing  them,  and  literature  in 
painting  their  weaknesses,  why  should  restless  anthropolo- 
gists hunt  legends  and  archives  to  reinstate  them  on  the  face 
of  the  earth,  especially  when  it  remands  us  back  to  a  state 
of  nature  or  savages  to  find  them?  "These  people  are  can- 
nibals," said  Zola  of  the  representatives  of  French  aris- 
tocracy and  intellect,  who  crowded  the  courtroom  to  ring 
out  their  cheers  over  the  base  verdict,  "Guilty."     But,  of 


About  Heroes  68 

course,  any  poor,  ignorant  cannibal  who  merely  gratifies 
his  appetite  for  dinner  might  blush  to  find  himself  ranged 
beside  these  cultured  monsters,  athirst  for  lives,  honor  and 
every  human  principle  of  decency  or  justice.  It  is  the 
growth  in  power  and  intellect  without  a  corresponding 
growth  in  goodness  and  truth  that  is  the  reproach  of  civi- 
lization everywhere,  and  the  thing  that  makes  it  almost  an 
appalling  matter  to  have  some  white  embodiment  of  all  its 
own  ideals  step  out  of  the  dim  past  and  very  ranks  of  sav- 
agery to  try  it.«  progress  along  the  eternal  lines. 

However,  there  is  still  a  chance  for  us,  for  has  not  the 
well-known  president  of  a  voters'  league  recently  declared 

*that  he  would  not  indorse  the  Angel  Gabriel  if  he  were  not 
on  the  winning  ticket,  and  it  has  never  been  the  part  of  these 
J      ideal  creatures  to  get  themselves  on  the  winning  ticket.     To 

Pall  appearances  they  only  become  our  snow-white  heroes 
when  they  are  dead  and  well  out  of  the  way.  If  they  can  not 
attach  themselves  to  earth  by  a  few  weaknesses  while  they 
live,  society  generally  takes  up  the  matter  and  fits  them  out 
with  a  saving  panoply  of  sins  and  accusations  if  it  pro- 
poses to  make  any  use  of  them.  It  is  more  than  possible  that 
if  truth  were  told  there  are  heroes  of  true  and  honest  pur- 
pose among  us  to-day.  But  let  them  start  out  to  do  an 
unusual  and  earnest  work,  and  see  what  hints  of  evil  and 
all  duplicity  will  be  brought  to  bear  upon  them.  That  gen- 
tle-souled  Walt  Whitman  may  have  intended  no  sarcasm 
when  he  declared  that  it  is  only  after  the  "noble  inventors" 
that  the  sons  of  God  may  come  upon  the  earth  singing  his 
songs.  But  he  perpetrated  a  rather  neat  one,  notwithstand- 
ing, and  perhaps  it  is  not  till  we  have  lost  these  noble  in- 
ventors of  dusky  earth  garments  for  our  heroes  that  we  need 
be  very  much  afraid  that  we  shall  have  to  creep  under  their 
huge  legs   and  peep   about  to   find  ourselves   dishonorable 


t 


64  About  Heroes 

graves,  but  to  be  able  to  speak  with  the  assurance  of  Brown- 
ing of  "My  peers  the  heroes  of  old"  would  certainly  be  an 
agreeable  thing  to  any  man  if  he  could  reconcile  the  world 
to  it.  Many  and  varied  counsels  thereto  have  been  offered 
him  also,  from  Byron's  advice  that  the  hero  must  drink 
brandy  to  the  modern  diplomat's  insistence  that,  like  Janus, 
he  must  have  two  faces.  But  perhaps  that  discerning  old 
essayist,  Addison,  comes  nearest  to  the  case  when  he  declares 
simply  that  he  must  know  how  to  make  both  the  hero  and 
the  man  complete. 


I 


THE  PURSUIT  OF  GHOSTS 

PURELY  by  accident  the  psychic  societies  captured  a 
gliost.  An  uncapped  lens  of  a  camera,  left  in  the  de- 
serted library  ^f  an  old  English  manor  house,  revealed  on 
the  developed  negative  the  veritable  figure  of  the  lord  of  the 
manor  seated  in  a  high-backed  chair  of  the  ancient  sanctum. 
And  this  at  the  very  hour  when  the  body  of  said  lord  was 
being  laid  away  in  a  kirkyard  near  by. 

Of  course,  the  society  for  psychic  research  took  care  of 
the  mystery,  and  the  poets  and  seers  who  stand  harking 
with  spirit  ear  at  the  door  of  the  arcanum  advised  us  not  to 
be  ^ast  down  by  such  mystery;  or  marvel,  but  to  "go  right 
on."  Joining  hands  with  science,  they  whispered  stoutly, 
"Let  us  recognize  that  mystery  of  this  kind  exists,  but  until 
it  reveal  itself  we  have  not  the  right  to  relax  our  efforts  nor 
cast  down  our  eyes  and  resign  ourselves  to  silence."  The 
aim  of  all  men  should  be  to  master  the  forces  of  matter  and 
wrest  from  them  their  secret,  and  then  go  on  to  that  gen- 
eral secret  of  all  life  which  "lies  hidden  at  the  end."  The 
fact  that  science  has  become  hospitable  to  a  ghost  and  set 
upon  taking  its  photograph  is  directly  in  the  line  of  their 
counsel,  even  though  the  unbelieving  are  out  with  cameras 
and  confederates  trying  to  show  by  what  neat  tricks  and 
accidents  the  filmy  ghosts  may  be  developed. 

There  was  a  time  when  the  wondrous  feats  of  the  Indian 
fakirs  were  submitted  slyly  to  the  tests  of  the  camera,  and 
the  trees  and  flowers  and  dancing  angels  which  they  claimed 
to  bring  straight  from  paradise  or  some  deeps  of  the  un- 

65 


66  The  Pursuit  of  Ghosts 

known  would  make  no  impression  on  its  plates.  Hence  they 
were  not  there,  said  the  savants,  and  meant  simply  an  op- 
tical illusion  produced  by  the  magicians,  and  on  the  strength 
of  this  dictum  the  value  of  the  camera  in  catching  creatures 
or  things  that  were  there  has  been  on  the  increase.  No 
freaks  of  the  imagination  or  nerve  disorders  could  deceive 
this  calm  "eye  of  science,"  it  was  said,  and  the  veritable 
figure  of  a  dead  or  absent  lord  on  the  sensitive  plate  of  an 
open  camera  in  his  deserted  library  must  mean  something 
of  that  lord's  ability  to  transport  himself  about,  indepen- 
dent of  his  body.  Barring  the  chance  of  some  sly  page  or 
butler  slipping  in  to  assist  a  materialized  spirit  to  the  lord's 
oak  chair,  one  would  say  that  it  must.  And  just  for  this 
reason  it  may  be  well  to  take  the  advice  of  the  higher  lights 
and  go  straight  on  spiritualizing  ourselves  with  a  view  to 
getting  thus  at  the  truth  of  the  matter,  however  science  may 
hobble  along  either  with  or  without  us.  It  must  be  easier 
for  spirit  to  discern  spirit  than  for  the  lens  of  a  camera  to 
catch  up  with  one,  and  if  a  respectable  dead  man  will  go 
and  sit  down  with  a  photographic  apparatus  there  may  be 
no  reason  why  he  would  not  associate  with  any  of  the  least 
of  us  if  we  would  give  him  proper  encouragement. 

The  dullness  with  which  the  second  century  man  looked 
into  the  infinite  deep  of  heaven  with  all  the  starry  realms  of 
being  and  deemed  it  but  a  pretty  tinted  cover  for  his  flat 
earth,  was  slight  beside  the  stupid  blindness  in  which  we 
walk  among  the  invisible  forces  of  creation,  and  powers  that 
sway  us  on  every  hand  in  the  practical  belief  that  we  are 
the  only  quickened  spirits  in  the  illimitable  space.  That 
every  drop  of  water  or  atom  of  matter  is  aglow  with  invis- 
ible life  science  declares  to  us,  but  that  the  highest  form 
of  life,  the  spirit  life,  is  everywhere  we  are  loth  to  believe, 
because  science  has  not  adjusted  its  lens  to  capture  it.     As 


The  Pursuit  of  Ghosts  67 

well  might  we  declare  that  there  is  no  melody  in  the  forest 
nor  music  in  the  spheres,  because  the  human  ear  can  follow 
but  to  a  certain  point  those  vibrations  of  sound,  which  yet 
go  on  and  on  in  divinist  harmony  through  all  creation's 
bounds.  To  listen  with  "soul,  not  ear,"  and  catch  the  "quir- 
ing to  the  young-eyed  cherubims,"  as  the  poet  catches  it 
through  spirit  sympathctics,  is  the  thing  the  seers  and  sing- 
ers of  all  ages  have  taught  us,  and  yet  we  wait  for  some 
advance  of  aiaterial  science  to  convince  us  that  there  are 
spirits  touching  us  at  every  corner. 

"Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart,  for  they  shall  see  God," 
said  the  Lord  of  Spirits,  and  that  appears  to  be  all  there 
is  of  it ;  and  no  time,  nor  condition  is  set  to  the  achievement 
of  that  purity  and  sight.  Moses,  Socrates,  Buddha,  may 
all  have  compassed  it,  as  the  tales  record,  and  any  living 
creature  who  could  bring  himself  to  that  pure,  transparent 
atmosphere  of  the  unstained  spirit,  could  no  doubt  walk  with 
God  and  the  angels,  whether  in  the  body  or  out  of  the  body. 
It  is  in  such  hours  of  spirit  exaltation  that  the  good  and 
gifted  ones  of  all  ages  have  believed  that  they  broke  through 
the  bars  of  sense  and  held  communion  with  celestial  beings, 
or  with  the  souls  of  their  beloved  dead.  And  whether  their 
belief  is  assured  or  not,  at  least  there  is  enough  in  it  to  point 
the  conclusion  that  it  is  along  this  spirit  line  that  our  best 
hope  comes. 

Speak  to  him,  for  he  hears  you. 
And  spirit  with  spirit  may  meet, 

says  Tennyson,  and  there  is  little  doubt  that  with  that 
faith  and  understanding  the  communion  of  spirits,  whether 
visible  or  invisible,  ought  not  be  difficult  to  establish. 
Everything  in  the  universe  has  its  own  medium  of  life  and 
conununication,  and  innocence  and  trust  may  be  more  en- 


68  The  Pursuit  of  Ghosts 

ticing  to  spirits  than  all  the  scientific  courtesies  of  the 
schools.  Poets  like  Shelley  and  Wordsworth  have  believed 
that  sweet  and  guileless  infancy  holds  long  a  close  and  glad 
relation  to  the  angels,  ere  the  "shades  of  the  prison  house 
begin  to  close  about  the  growing  boy,"  and  it  may  be  that 
here,  as  elsewhere,  it  is  the  little  child  who  can  best  show  us 
the  way  into  the  kingdom. 

A  pretty  story  of  one  of  these  little  ones  comes  from  a 
fair  suburban  home  not  far  away.  Two  children,  John  and 
Mary,  were  born  to  that  home,  and,  as  the  old  poet  has  it, 
"grew  in  beauty  side  by  side,"  while  all  nature  bower- 
gowned  and  blossomed  about  them  and  filled  their  souls  with 
its  joy.  Cultured  Christian  parents  nurtured  them  and  a 
little  leaf-embowered  church  and  Sunday  school  gathered 
them  in  for  wondrous  stories  of  heaven  and  the  angels.  But 
one  sad  day  a  shadow  fell  across  the  threshold  and  in  the 
wake  of  it  Mary  slipped  away  to  another  country.  The 
parents  mourned  her  as  dead,  but  Johnny,  who  had  been 
told  that  she  was  an  angel,  went  out  under  the  spreading 
elm  where  they  had  been  wont  to  play  together  to  find  out 
about  it.  And  there,  shortly,  his  mother  found  him,  in 
great  joy,  playing,  as  he  insisted,  with  the  little  sister  who 
had  come  when  he  called  her  and  promised  to  be  his  play- 
mate still.  For  days  and  weeks  he  played  about  the  old 
haunts,  or  rambled  through  the  woods  in  the  avowed  com- 
panionship of  the  departed  sister,  and  the  astonished  par- 
ents, who  watched  him  curiously,  found  him  talking,  laugh- 
ing and  sporting  gleefully  as  with  some  visible  playmate. 
He  did  not  die,  nor  go  into  a  fever,  nor  develop  any  of  the 
brain  diseases  nor  eccentricities  that  science  might  have  ex- 
pected of  him.  But  one  day  he  came  in  sadly  and  told  his 
mother  that  Mary  had  gone  away  and  could  not  come  to 
play  with  him  any  more. 


The  Pursuit  of  Ghosts 


69 


Of  course  the  psychical  societies  make  sliort  work  of  such 
cases,  and  there  may  be  plenty  of  them  among  the  imagina- 
tive children  of  the  land.  But,  after  all,  in  their  trusting 
simplicity,  tliey  come  perhaps  as  near  to  the  spirit  truths 
in  the  matter  as  "the  obstinate  questionings"  and  "blank 
misgivings"  of  older  creatures,  "moving  about  in  worlds  not 
realized." 


A  FEATURE  OF  THE  HOUR 

THE  literary  man  in  politics  is  a  feature  of  the  hour. 
Not  that  he  is  a  new  figure  there,  but  rather  that  he  is 
not.  It  is  the  change  of  front  that  counts.  The  blot  on  a 
Dryden's  genius  and  the  national  star  on  a  Lowell's  is  the 
measure  of  that  change.  It  is  the  difference  between  cower- 
ing and  commanding,  leading  and  being  led,  and  in  days  past, 
even  John  Milton  himself  was  not  free  from  the  spoiler's 
touch.  The  poet  in  exile  and  the  poet  in  a  President's  cab- 
inet points  the  progress  of  the  world  in  the  direction  of  the 
literary  statesman  and  politician,  and  republican  Amer- 
ica clearly  keeps  up  with  the  procession.  Poets  and  ro- 
mancers, playwrights  and  fable  makers  are  in  high  demand 
as  legislative  candidates  and  members  of  Congress,  and  even 
law,  medicine  and  pedagogics  are  hunting  the  man  who 
knows  how  to  keep  romance  alive  in  his  heart. 

Nobody  questions  that  this  may  be  the  way  of  refresh- 
ment for  murky  politics  and  musty  law.  To  have  the 
guardians  of  the  central  fires  let  in  to  their  courts  and  cau- 
cuses must  inevitably  do  something  to  warm  and  refine  their 
paling  altars.  But  for  the  high  priests,  or  priestesses,  of 
the  sacred  flame,  themselves,  what  of  them?  Are  they  to 
keep  their  souls  alive  and  fed  at  the  ward  meeting,  or  the 
boodler  trial,  or  find  an  influx  of  the  divine  afflatus  in  the 
trooping  stream  of  applicants  at  ambassador's  or  execu- 
tive's door.  Alas,  every  peaceful  spring  of  Helicon,  or 
*'many  fountained  Ida"  cries  out  against  such  sacrilege,  and 

70 


A  Feature  of  the  Hour  71 


^.,...... ,.,.,^.. 

^decry  it. 

If  the  country  has  really  come  to  feel  the  need  of  the  lit- 
erary man's  influence  in  society  and  state,  why  not  give  him 
the  chance  to  speak  the  truth  that  is  within  him  in  his  own 
way?  If  he  is  to  be  a  support  to  the  government  in  such 
work  why  not  allow  him  the  recognition  and  remuneration 
of  a  servant  of  the  government  that  he  may  keep  his  sa- 

I^cred  office  quite  apart  from  the  sordid  question  of  popular 
^ptaste  and  market  value  in  the  word  he  utters?  The  his- 
tory of  all  literature  is  the  history  of  the  world's  neglect 
and  stupidity  in  this  direction.  The  effort  to  restore  the 
>  Poe  cottage  at  Fordham,  N.  Y.,  recalled  some  of  our  grand 
^^Kfiinning  here.  Picture  our  greatest  American  poet  sitting 
sliivering  by  that  bed  of  straw,  where  his  young  wife  lay 
aying,  with  only  the  coat  he  had  torn  from  his  back  for  her 
covering.  And  Sidney  Lanier,  that  divine  master  of  song 
and  lute,  how  did  his  life  go  out  in  suffering  and  want,  to 
the  eternal  loss  of  American  literature,  while  publishers 
were  printing  books  that  would  sell,  or  bringing  out  war 
ditties  that  perished  with  the  occasion. 

Dr.  Johnson  writing  "Rasselas"  to  pay  for  his  mother's 
funeral,  Dante  learning  in  want  and  exile  how  bitter  it  was 
to  climb  another's  stairs,  Carlyle  half  starving  on  bread  and 
porridge  at  Craigenputtock,  these  are  but  a  few  of  the 
authors'  woes  that  point  the  world's  nice  care  of  her  best 
writers.  And,  although  to-day  the  author  with  his  piling 
editions  can  scarcely  pose  as  a  mendicant  or  consumer  of 
the  midnight  oil,  yet  it  is  doubtful  if  the  live  connection 
between  bread  and  glory,  truth  and  the  day's  living,  can  be 
much  more  happily  effected.  Truth  may  be,  in  a  vague  way, 
what  the  world  wants,  but  the  inner  observer  who  writes  that 


*72  A  Feature  of  the  Hour 

it  is  truth  "toned  down,  diluted,  conventionalized,  trimmed," 
probably  knows  what  he  is  talking  about. 

To  make  the  writer  totally  independent  of  the  world's 
passing  whims  and  pleasure  is  the  only  way,  therefore,  to 
enable  him  to  minister  to  its  fundamental  and  eternal  needs. 
And,  as  dead  men  can  tell  no  tales,  even  to  publishers,  some 
author's  fund  or  government  pay  to  enable  the  author,  as 
well  as  the  state's  attorney,  to  stand  by  truth  and  justice 
and  the  higher  things  of  life  without  starving  for  it,  is  a 
clear  necessity  in  the  case. 

It  will  be  a  very  different  world  from  what  it  is  now  when 
our  Whitmans  and  our  Emersons,  our  truest  "conservators 
of  the  vestal  fire"  anywhere  in  literature,  will  stand  much 
show  among  ward  politicians  and  Tammany  chiefs,  and  even 
our  successful  literary  statesmen  and  executives  have  been 
more  or  less  obliged  to  abandon  the  "higher  calling"  in  en- 
tering upon  the  public  and  political  life.  If  then  it  is  true 
that  it  is  through  the  author,  the  poet,  that  "all  men  see," 
is  not  something  lost  to  us  when  his  high  office  is  sacrificed 
to  any  other,  and  should  not  the  note  of  true  progress  and 
enlightenment  in  modern  life  reveal  itself,  not  in  sinking 
him  in  the  politician,  but  in  lifting  him  so  effectively  into 
the  freedom  and  greatness  of  his  own  work  that  the  poli- 
tician's glories  would  have  small  attraction  for  him?  It 
meant  something  for  the  higher  humanity  when  the  son  of 
our  beloved  poet,  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  stood  up  at  a 
Western  university  and  declared  to  teacher  and  student 
alike,  that  the  glory  of  the  ideal,  "the  joy  of  eternal  pur- 
suit" could  run  like  a  romantic  passion  through  every 
branch  of  their  work  or  study,  that  neither  law  nor  medi- 
cine, nor  any  known  profession  need  be  "commonplace," 
while  the  romance  of  the  unachieved,  the  passion  for  the 
ideal,  burned  within  them.     But  was  it  not  very  much  the 


A  Feature  of  the  Hour  7S 


fine  fruition  of  the  New  England  poet's  thought  coming 
down  to  us  as  a  divine  inheritance?  And  how  would  it  have 
fared  with  the  whole  of  that  rich  inheritance  if  young  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes  had  given  himself  to  politics  and  the  anti- 
slavery  movement  in  the  formative  period  of  his  life,  as  his 
abolitionist  friends  so  clamorously  demanded?  Indeed,  his 
interesting  letter  to  James  Russell  Lowell  explaining  his 
principles  on  the  subject  is  the  significant  answer  to  the 
whole  matter,  and  one  which  the  keepers  of  the  sacred  fires 
would  do  well  to  ponder  before  taking  the  stump  or  casting 
in  their  lot  too  effectually  with  the  politicians.  However, 
the  gods  do  sometimes  interpose  to  save  their  own,  and  it 
may  be  that  Booth  Tarkington's  stage  fright  was  a  special 
evidence  of  their  care.  Certainly  if  it  comes  again  he  should 
take  it  for  a  sign. 


OUR  DUMB  RELATIONS 

WHAT  is  tlie  opinion  of  Pythagoras  concerning  wild 
fowl?"  asks  a  Twelfth  Night  philosopher.  "That 
the  soul  of  our  grandam  might  haply  inhabit  a  bird,"  re- 
plies another.  Times  have  changed  since  the  age  of 
Pythagoras,  yet  to-day,  whatever  we  may  think  of  our 
grandams,  we  have  lost  no  respect  for  wild  fowl.  It  is  not 
probable  that  the  ancient  doctrine  of  metempsychosis  will 
be  revived,  but  certainly  if  the  glorification  of  animals  goes 
much  farther  it  will  no  longer  be  open  to  theologians  to  dis- 
miss the  question  of  the  immortality  of  brutes  as  "invidi- 
ous." Indeed,  Bisliop  Butler  himself  scarcely  does  that, 
although  Goldwin  Smith  so  interprets  him,  for  he  admits, 
negatively  at  least,  that  there  may  be  something  in  the 
brute  which,  along  his  line  of  argument,  might  come  in  for 
immortality,  but  that  the  question  can  in  no  way  militate 
against  the  immortality  of  man. 

However,  the  animal  lovers  of  to-day  would  more  and 
more  confound  the  theologian,  for  it  is  not  alone  the  brute 
instinct  or  lower  order  of  intelligence  they  are  finding  in 
them,  but  the  higher  moral  qualities.  Maeterlinck  has  just 
shown  us  in  the  insect  world  the  highest  type  of  that  altru- 
ism, which  is  held  the  basis  of  all  morality,  in  the  unswerv- 
ing devotion  of  the  bee  to  the  good  of  the  community,  and 
the  annual  sacrifice  it  makes  of  all  its  years  of  toils  and 
gains  to  the  next  generation.  "The  act,"  he  submits,  "be 
it  conscious  or  not,  undoubtedly  passes  the  limit  of  human 
morality."     Spiders,    which    we    are    told,    are    properly 

74 


Our  Dumb  Relations  75 


■  classed  as  animals,  are  making  themselves  interesting  to  sci- 

fence  through  wliat  one  writer  calls  the  "personal  bravery" 
of  their  courtships,  which  alwa^'s  includes  the  probability  of 
being  pounced  upon  by  the  scornful  female  and  devoured 
alive.  Turtles,  in  the  laboratory  at  Harvard,  are  evincing 
perceptive  f  .cultics  that  are  highly  wise,  if  not  otherwise 
moral,  and  beyond  everything  else  the  noble  dog  has  come 
into  the  kingdom,  and,  in  the  "person"  of  the  beloved 
"Pluto"  of  Chicago,  been  honored,  solely  for  his  virtues, 
with  as  distinguished  a  funeral  as  the  prominent  citizens  of 
three  suburban  villages  could  turn  out. 

Truly  none  can  hereafter  deny  immortality  to  brutes,  and 
it  only  remains  for  devout  worshipers  of  their  superiority 

^^to  get  out  litanies  and  rituals  in  their  service,  as  even  the 
best  efforts  of  village  clerks  and  society  leaders  do  not  seem 
quite  up  to  the  mark.     For  really  it  does  seem  a  little  with 

^k  these  gentle  creatures  of  field  and  forest,  as  Socrates  said  of 
women,  that  "once  made  our  equals  they  become  our  superi- 
ors. If  they  really  have  souls  to  know  the  wrongs  and 
burdens  put  upon  them  and  the  irony  of  our  small  human 
mastery  over  them,  and  yet  carry  themselves  with  that  meek, 
patient  and  cheery  spirit  toward  all  creation  which  the  do- 
mestic animals  disclose,  they  certainly  arc  so  much  greater 
than  we  that  we  might  well  set  them  up  in  our  temples  and 
prepare  to  do  them  reverence. 

The  main  trouble  seems  to  be  that  we  have  about  as  mixed 
ideas  concerning  the  real  virtues  of  birds  and  beasts  as  we 
ever  show  regarding  our  own,  and  if  the  new  teachers  of 
the  animal  school  are  right  the  old  ones  are  altogether 
wrong.  Here  is  Maeterlinck  telling  us  that  an  unconscious 
act  of  the  bee  can  exceed  the  limit  of  human  morality,  thus 
sweeping  morals  quite  out  of  the  field  of  intelligent  responsi- 
bility.    Brave  Pluto  was  honored  in  his  death  because  he 


76  Oiir  Dumb  Relations 

was  never  known  to  bite  a  human  being.  The  dogs  that  de- 
light to  bark  and  bite  are  now  out  of  the  ring,  although  the 
excellent  Watts  has  assured  us  that  "God  hath  made  them 
so,"  and  for  a  purpose  we  know  that  some  worthy  watch 
dogs  have  turned  to  good  account.  Science  even  justifies 
Dr.  Watts  in  saying,  "Let  bears  and  lions  growl  and  fight; 
for  it  is  their  nature  to,"  and  the  great  law  of  the  survival 
of  the  fittest  is  conserved  thereby.  Nevertheless,  in  the  fond 
efforts  to  fit  them  out  with  human  virtues  pet  bears  and 
other  wild  animals  are  often  taken  into  family  circles  or 
naturalists'  camps,  and  then  summarily  executed  when  they 
eat  up  the  small  children  within  reach,  though  it  is  their 
nature  to.  Even  dogs  and  cats  suffer  no  end  of  violence 
through  being  expected  to  live  up  to  the  human  standard  of 
domestic  virtues,  to  say  nothing  of  the  violence  they  inflict 
on  their  teachers.  An  Irish  setter  that  had  been  extrava- 
gantly petted  by  its  mistress  recently  undertook  to  drown 
a  new  baby  that  was  supplanting  him  in  her  affections,  and 
was  promptly  shot  by  his  owner  for  his  misguided  affection. 
To  live  out  its  true  nature,  to  fulfill  the  ends  of  its  own 
being,  which  Spinoza  makes  the  highest  virtue  of  dogs  or 
men,  is  clearly  not  one  which  the  new  animal  theories  are 
prepared  to  accept  and  if  the  soul  of  our  grandam  did  in- 
habit a  wild  fowl,  it  is  expected  to  show  itself  superior  to 
us  by  carrying  all  the  virtues  of  our  higher  incarnation  into 
its  low  estate.  But  nature  knows  better,  and  perhaps  when 
a  few  more  babies  are  sacrificed  to  Irish  setters,  or  beau- 
tiful women, .  like  Miss  Elizabeth  Mayland,  of  Yorkshire 
fame,  sent  to  nunneries  through  the  lacerations  of  jealous 
collies,  the  place  of  our  dumb  relations  in  the  scale  of  being 
will  be  more  safely  adjusted,  and  babies  and  poodles  not  so 
embarrassingly  mixed  in  human  homes  and  sympathies.  The 
recent  story  of  a  gallant  fireman  carrying  out  a  pet  poodle 


Hf 


k 


Our  Dumb  Relations  77 


in  its  blankets  and  pillows  from  a  burning  mansion  in  the 
brave  hope  that  he  was  rescuing  the  heir  of  the  family,  is  a 
good  companion-piece  to  the  flowery  obsequies  of  the  late 
lamented  Pluto. 

The  wasto  of  sentiment  upon  beasts  and  all  creeping 
things  while  everywhere  humanity  is  starving  for  it,  is  one 
of  the  edifying  spectacles  of  our  modern  civilization,  and 
only  equaled  by  the  irony  of  the  animal's  sublimely  indif- 
ferent attitude  toward  it.  One  of  the  truest  animal  lovers 
of  the  land,  touching  their  best  estate,  writes:  "Not  one 
of  them  is  respectable  or  unhappy  over  the  whole  earth," 
and  clearly  he  deems  it  enough  for  man  to  bear  the  weight 
of  unhappy  respectability  without  trying  to  fit  the  free  ani- 
1  ml  kingdom  to  it.  Society  may  be,  as  the  duchess  of  Bed- 
ford deems  it,  a  kind  of  zoo,  but,  even  so,  each  beast  after 
his  own  kind  was  the  order  of  creation,  and  science  has  not 
yet  found  the  missing  link  that  quite  unites  the  human  and 
animal  zoo.  That  it  discerns  in  all  shapes  of  animal  life 
"a  form  of  the  same  great  power  that  quickens  us  also,"  is 
the  real  ground  of  the  respect  it  demands  of  us  for  every 
living  thing.  In  the  light  of  this  high  truth  it  does  indeed 
become  a  serious  matter  to  set  foot  upon  a  worm.  Never- 
theless, it  is  no  pleasanter  now  than  in  Job's  day  to  say  to 
the  worm,  "Thou  art  my  mother  and  my  sister." 


PROPHETS  AND  DISCIPLES 

THERE  is  always  danger  of  a  Saul  among  the  prophets. 
Worse  still,  the  possibility  of  falling  into  the  hands  of 
lying  prophets.  But  when  a  great  seer  declares  his  limita- 
tions and  avers  that  it  is  only  the  ignorant  who  have  con- 
fidence in  him  he  really  ought  to  awaken  a  better  confidence 
in  all  hearers.  It  is  one  of  the  prime  truths  in  the  line  of 
the  psychic  tliat  only  they  who  are  ignorant  turn  to  the 
outside  prophet.  They  who  are  not  ignorant  look  within. 
"The  mystic,"  says  a  recent  speaker,  "is  he  who  beholds 
things  from  his  viewpoint  of  the  unseen,  and  he  is  always 
a  plagiarist  because  of  necessity  he  builds  that  unseen  from 
the  images  and  material  of  the  seen."  To  what  end  there- 
fore should  Maeterlinck,  Whitman,  Blake  or  any  other  seer 
or  mystic  undertake  to  shape  the  spirit  world  for  the  man 
who  can  think  for  himself,  or  resolve  the  secret  of  spirit 
power  save  to  those  who  have  never  learned  it  for  them- 
selves.'^ It  is  the  ignorant,  of  course,  who  turn  to  them  foi- 
light  and  commonly,  too,  it  is  the  ignorant  who  abuse  them 
for  the  unsatisfying  character  of  that  light. 

The  main  difficulty  in  this  field  is  from  an  army  of  "dis- 
appointed and  ignorant  disciples"  who  expect  from  every 
new  prophet  or  explorer  who  arises  in  it  something  that  he 
is  in  nowise  competent  to  furnish  them,  and  that  is  the  life 
touch  that  shall  open  their  eyes.  Not  until  man  knows 
himself  as  a  part  of  the  unseen  world  is  it  any  use  to  paint 
the  imagery  and  mastery  of  it  to  his  bewildered  mind.  The 
utmost  that  any  poet,  prophet,  teacher  or  preacher  can  do, 

78 


Prophets  and  Disciples  79 

is  to  "play  upon  the  latent  infinity  within  us,"  as  Stanley 
Lee  expresses  it,  and  help  us  find  that  larger  self  that  knits 
us  to  the  unseen,  the  universal.  Why  then  should  any  ra- 
tional creature  run  after  sage  or  mystic  to  instruct  him 
instead  of  sitting  down  under  his  own  bo-tree  and  making 
it  all  out  for  himself?  Or  better  still,  walking  his  own 
straightforward,  fearless  way  into  the  open  door  of  the 
kingdom  that  has  never  been  denied  him? 

There  is  no  question,  of  course,  that  there  are  great  and 
infallible  psychic  laws  whereby  the  mastery  of  the  spirit 
forces  may  be  laid  hold  of.  But  the  beauty  of  this  truth 
is,  that  the  humblest  peasant  appears  to  have  been  as  suc- 
cessful as  the  subtlest  philosopher  in  finding  them  out,  or, 
at  least,  in  living  them  out,  with  no  concern  about  defining 
them.  Indeed,  the  majority  of  people  who  live  bravely  and 
decently  their  troublous  lives  are  entirely  in  the  line  of  them, 
and  the  tremendous  metaphysical,  theosophical  and  occult 
systems  and  teachings  that  are  built  around  them  serve  oft- 
times  only  to  bewilder  and  perplex  the  "ignorant,"  but  self- 
taught  "disciple."  It  is  like  the  professor's  wife  who  had 
no  trouble  in  sewing  on  a  button  till  her  inquiring  husband 
said,  "My  dear,  liow  do  you  manage  to  hit  the  hole  instead 
of  the  button?  I  never  could  do  it."  Then  for  the  first  time 
she  broke  her  needle  in  seeking  the  hole,  and  replied  merely, 
"Well,  since  you  have  called  my  attention  to  it,  I  can't 
either." 

Before  man  began  to  speculate  much  about  the  laws  and 
principles  that  knit  him  to  his  creator  he  sat  placidly  in 
tent  doors  or  beside  still  waters  communing  with  God  and 
his  angels  on  all  the  affairs  of  life.  But  when  there  came 
priests  and  rites  and  cumbrous  systems  the  veil  of  the  tem- 
ple rose  between  him  and  his  God,  and  not  even  the  coming 
of  the  human  Christ  has  thoroughly  rent  it  asunder.    Never- 


80  Prophets  and  Disciples 

theless  the  intervention  of  all  creatures  was  rejected  by  him. 
**Go  into  your  closet  and  when  you  have  shut  your  door 
commune  with  your  Father,  who  is  in  secret,  and  your  Father 
who  seeth  in  secret  shall  reward  you  openly."  That  is  all 
there  is  of  it.  Don't  ask  Maeterlinck,  or  Blake,  or  sage  or 
mystic  of  any  school,  how  you  shall  reach  the  invisible.  Talk 
to  God  for  yourself  and  establish  your  own  connection. 
"All  that  God  is,"  says  Nash,  "he  puts  in  pledge  for  your 
perfecting,"  and  there  is  nothing  for  man  to  do  but  claim 
the  benefit  of  that  pledge.  The  foundation  of  that  grand 
principle  of  human  brotherhood  which  now  runs  through 
every  branch  of  philosophy,  sociology  or  religion  is,  of 
course,  the  great  truth  that  every  man  has  God  for  his 
Father  and  can  approach  him  in  the  full  confidence  of  a 
child  at  any  moment. 

The  new  platonic  mysticism  which  Plotinus  well  charac- 
terizes as  "half  a  swoon  and  half  an  ecstasy"  still  pours  its 
subjective  stream  into  much  of  the  teaching  on  this  subject, 
so  that  nothing  short  of  a  trance  or  an  epileptic  fit  seems 
equal  to  reducing  man  to  that  etherealized  condition  held 
necessary  for  the  sacred  communication.  Even  the  sanest 
of  the  modern  mystics  tell  us  that  much  inner  knowledge 
and  deep  experience  must  have  been  acquired  to  open  to  us 
this  spirit  connection.  But  consider,  in  the  weight  of  all 
this,  the  simplicity  of  that  open-air  call  of  the  Lord  to  the 
man  in  the  sycamore  tree,  "Zacchaeus,  come  down,  for  this 
day  I  must  abide  at  thy  house." 

"God  has  most  to  give  us  in  the  common  things  of  life," 
says  a  writer  of  to-day,  and  one  of  but  yesterday  declares, 
"God  must  have  loved  the  common  people  best — ^he  made  so 
many  of  them."  Is  it  conceivable,  then,  that  only  to  a  few 
ecstatic  dreamers,  or  even  sage  psychologists,  he  would  have 
left  the  secret  of  that  tie  that  binds  man  to  himself,  instead 


I 


i 


Prophets  and  Disciples  81 

of  to  the  whole  army  of  toiling  men,  the  publicans  and  the 
sinners,  who  cry  out  in  their  need  to  him,  and  in  that  very 
cry  establish  the  relation  over  which  the  schools  and  philoso- 
phers have  been  agonizing  for  ages?  It  is  life  that  teaches, 
and  few  can  go  very  far  in  it  without  learning  that  some- 
thing beyond  brute  force  is  at  the  heart  of  power.  To 
"feel  after"  and  find  it  is  better  than  asking  some  other  feeler 
how  far  along  he  is  in  the  business.  And  if  a  writer  has 
spent  his  life  in  trying  to  bring  this  truth  home  to  men  and 
still  they  turn  to  him  for  illumination  and  some  coveted 
revelation,  is  it  strange  that  he  calls  them  his  **ignorant 
disciples." 

A  knowledge  that  can  only  come  from  within  is  a  curious 
thing  to  be  demanding  of  one's  teachers  and  it  is  a  recog- 
nized difficulty  in  the  study  of  even  psychic  phenomena  that 
not  all  the  testimony  in  the  world  will  convince  a  man  of 
anything  occult  that  he  can  not  verify  in  his  own  experi- 
ence. Who  of  all  the  devout  advocates  of  a  literal  Scrip- 
ture verily  believes  that  Lazarus  rose  from  the  dead,  or, 
claiming  to  believe  it,  takes  in  one  shadow  of  its  tremendous 
import  in  the  still  baffling  questions  of  death  and  the  here- 
after? Out  of  the  depths  of  his  own  consciousness,  or  no- 
where, man  comes  to  the  belief  in  immortality,  and  so  in  the 
silence  and  deeps  of  his  own  soul  and  its  needs,  he  touches 
hands  with  God  and  the  spirit  forces,  or  nowhere.  To  what 
mounts  of  power  or  vision  the  touch  shall  lift  him  is  another 
matter  not  to  be  determined  by  the  teachers. 

Not  all  who  see  God  in  the  burning  bush  take  off  their 
shoes  or  leave  the  night  behind  them.  Yet,  there  are  souls 
that  can  make  their  bed  in  hell  without  losing  their  hold  on 
God,  while  others  can  serve  in  all  his  holy  temples  without 
ever  finding  him.  Here,  too,  the  soul  baffles  the  creed-mak- 
ers and  psychologist  and  renders  it  impossible  to   say  by 


I 


82  Prophets  and  Disciples 

what  principle  of  light  or  darkness  the  power  of  the  invis- 
ible is  made  known  to  it.  That  always  and  everywhere  that 
power  waits  to  unfold  itself  to  every  soul  is  about  all  that 
can  be  confidently  asserted.  And  if,  knowing  that,  man  can 
not  manage  to  make  his  own  connection  with  the  life  forces, 
it  is  doubtful  if  all  the  prophets  or  teachers  in  the  universe 
can  do  much  to  help  him. 


c 

SATAN  IN  LITERATURE 

TO  Shakespeare  and  his  contemporaries  the  Prince  of 
Darkness  was  a  gentleman.     The  flower  of  wickedness 
|H|of  old  required  some  fineness  in  it.     Sin  was  a  sweet  morsel 
~^  under  the  tongue.     The  confessions  of  a  Rosseau  or  Au- 
'T       gustine  touched  the  empyrean  as  well  as  the  pit.     Verlaine 
^^B  in  the  slums  or  the  criminal's  cell  was  still  a  god  of  celes- 
tial flights  and  unrivaled  intuitions  of  spirit  truth.     Villon 
in  his  blackest  moments  bore  still  the  spotless  sheen  of  "the 
snows  of  yesterday."     The  divinity  of  genius  glorified  the 
H|  very  cohorts  of  hell,  and  Satan  was  but  a  fallen  Lucifer, 
whom  the  worshipers  of  power  and  greatness  must  perforce 
admire. 

All  tliis  was  too  much  honor  for  Satan.  "The  angels, 
not  half  so  happy  in  heaven,  went  envying  him"  and  his. 
And  so  now  he  has  fallen  from  his  high  estate,  and  we  have 
the  "journal  intime,"  or  notes  from  his  confessional,  full  of 
small  worries  over  toothbrushes  and  black  underclothes, 
and  redolent  of  vulgar  oaths,  which  science  tells  us  the  most 
impotent  of  his  subjects  indulge  in  to  change  the  currents 
of  their  ruffled  being  by  shocking  ears  polite.  Worst  of 
all,  the  women,  who  have  taken  him  in  charge,  propose  to 
marry  him  and  dress  him  out  in  "conventional  clothes"  and 
set  him  up  in  a  little  red  and  yellow  heaven  of  short  dura- 
tion, which  shall  match  him.  It  is  hard  to  part  like  this 
with  the  grand  Byronic  devil,  or  accomplished  Mephis- 
topheles  of  literature.     But,  after  all,  it  may  be  the  only 

83 


84  Satan  in  Literature 

way  to  escape  his  beguiling  subtleties  and  set  up  a  safer 
ruler  in  his  place. 

The  work  of  the  decadents  and  even  realists,  the  D'An- 
nuncios,  and  Moores,  and  Zolas,  has  been  to  cultivate  the 
devil  along  such  low  and  loathsome  lines  that  every  trace  of 
Lucifer-like  greatness  has  been  taken  out  of  him,  and  unless 
some  new  devil  can  be  put  in  literature  it  is  no  use  asking 
us  to  run  along  the  slimy  track  of  this  poor,  shining,  pes- 
simistic Satan,  in  conventional  clothes  or  petticoats,  wildly 
anathematizing  the  universe  and  asking  us  to  pity  him  in 
his  own  damnation.  It  was  a  very  wise  discerner  of  the 
laws  of  life  who  tells  us  that  "when  half  gods  go,  the  gods 
arrive,"  and  it  may  be  that  when  this  Satanic  half  god  of 
the  romances  fails  him  he  will  cast  about  for  some  true  god 
to  put  in  his  place.  And  then  perhaps  we  shall  see  that 
spiritual  renaissance  in  literature  which  the  spiritual  renais- 
sance in  thought  and  philosophy  should  have  ushered  in 
ere  this. 

To  resolve  some  strength,  intensity  and  sparkle  of  ef- 
fervescent life  into  the  better  forces,  some  Miltonic  touch 
to  show  "the  might  and  majesty  of  loveliness,"  has  been  the 
crying  need  of  modern  life  and  literature.  For  though  all 
science  and  philosophy  conspire  to  show  us  how  poor,  stu- 
pid and  self-destructive  evil  is,  and  how  weak,  senseless  and 
craven  the  cry  of  the  pessimist,  yet  the  effort  to  bring  life 
and  letters  up  to  the  standard  of  such  teaching  is  scarcely 
perceptible,  unless  it  may  be  in  this  very  dismantling  of  the 
devil  of  all  the  finer  glories  that  once  shone  about  him.  That 
does,  indeed,  suggest  the  hope  that  some  grand  master  of  the 
new  order  may  arise  to  consign  the  glories  and  heroism  of 
life  to  their  true  place  and  show  us  "how  sublime  it  is  to 
suffer  and  be  strong."  Nay,  more,  to  refuse  to  suffer  like 
dumb  beasts  of  the  field,  when  we  may  swing  ourselves  into 


Satan  in  Literature  86 

he   ryhthmic   joy   and   harmony   of   the   spheres   and  look 
down  the  ages  with  a  laugh  and  a  song. 

There  was  a  time,  to  be  sure,  when  about  everything 
bright,  spicy,  lad  beguiling  was  consigned  to  the  devil. 
That  was  before  the  teachers  had  shown  us  that  "the  mis- 
chief in  a  boy  is  the  basis  of  his  education,"  or  the  theo- 
logians had  opened  their  ears  to  the  Psalmist's  declaration 
I  that  "gladness  is  sown  for  the  upright."  Beauty  and 
strength  belong,  indeed,  to  the  sanctuaries  of  the  Lord  of 
pfe,  in  these  days,  and  "the  diseased  has  he  not  strength- 
fcned."  That  is  why  the  diseased  and  neurotic  writers  send 
put  such  weak  and  piteous  wails  to  some  "devil,  fate,  or 
l^orld,"  to  come  and  help  them,  and  more  and  more  as  they 
define  the  devil  they  believe  in,  they  show  him  totally  impo- 

Itent  to  do  anything  for  them.  The  angels  of  light  are  sweep- 
ing through  his  old  dominion,  and  gathering  to  themselves 
iven  the  bright  and  primrose  things  of  human  dalliance  he 
nas  been  wont  to  claim.  Mirth  and  laughter,  wit  and  song, 
Lre  of  them,  love  is  all  of  them,  and  those  natural  human 
Pesires,  into  which  the  poor  degenerates  are  trying  to  fuse 
such  lurid  flames  of  hell,  burn  with  their  brightest  glow  at 
their  pure  altars.  It  is  the  white  heat  of  the  furnace,  not 
the  red,  that  marks  the  utmost  intensity  of  the  fire,  and  life 
at  its  mightiest  is  ever  the  white  flame.  The  writers  who 
can  show  us  that,  are  the  coming  masters  in  literature,  and 
all  science  and  nature  are  ready  to  wait  upon  them. 

"Any  nose  may  ravage  with  impunity  a  rose,"  says  one 
of  our  sarcastic  poets,  but  the  sweet  rose  of  life  is  not  to 
lose  its  fragrance  because  it  has  become,  in  the  nostrils  of 
the  decadent  or  pessimist,  "an  empty  damned  weariness." 
The  end  of  it  can  only  be,  now  as  ever,  that  the  rose  will  be- 
long to  him  who  can  pluck  it,  and  a  hundred  devils  to  paint 
it  red  will  not  turn  it  over  to  the  grasp  of  any  too  weak  to 


86  Satan  m  Literature 

seize  it  in  its  pristine  loveliness.  Genius,  in  all  its  bounds, 
well  knows  this,  and  it  must  be  to  tempt  them  to  their  own 
destruction  that  it  is  leading  its  false  votaries  farther  and 
farther  away  from  the  saving  truth  of  it.  Meantime,  in 
the  common  walks  of  life,  the  work  may  be  for  our  salva- 
tion, for  so  long  as  Satan  himself  could  borrow  the  harp  of 
a  Villon  or  Verlaine  we  were  bound  to  run  after  him,  and 
risk  hades  for  the  glimpse  of  heaven  he  could  unfold  to  us. 
Now,  only,  when  he  drops  down  into  the  pit  of  the  pessimist 
and  whines  in  impotence  are  we  quite  ready  to  part  com- 
pany with  him. 


CONCERNING  HAPPINESS 

HERE  is  no  word  in  any  language  so  idly  tossed  about 
by  wise  and  foolish  alike  as  that  beguiling  word  hap- 
piness. Pursued  by  everybody  and  understood  by  none — 
truly  achieved  by  none — happiness  is  still  expatiated  upon, 
inculcated,  and  estimated,  by  every  writer  or  speaker  who 
can  catch  the  public  ear  as  if  any  knowledge  of  experience 
could  lay  back  of  the  effort.  The  result  in  recent  days  has 
come  to  be  a  contradiction  of  terms  which  any  honest  mind 

Pmust  discern  for  itself.  Happiness  as  a  duty,  happiness  as 
a  task,  a  "great  task,"  as  one  honest  soul  puts  it,  has  come 
to  be  the  interesting  form  in  which  the  delicious,  elusive 
and  mysterious  object  of  all  human  hopes  and  dreams  is 
presented  to  man's  mind.  And  this  in  the  light  of  the  rec- 
ognized fact  in  human  experience  that  what  comes  un- 
sought, unbought,  takes  fright  at  the  very  idea  of  becom- 
ing a  task. 

It  seems  to  be  the  cheering  up  philosopher  who  is  re- 
sponsible for  this  turn  of  affairs  in  the  kingdom  of  happi- 
ness. The  cheerful  spirit,  the  habit  of  looking  on  the  bright 
side  of  things,  may  indeed  be  cultivated  and  make  life  far 
more  bearable  and  probably  more  open  to  the  entrance  of 
the  deeper  spirit  of  joy.  But  it  is  true  still  that  such  la- 
bored cheer  is  not  happiness  nor  worthy  to  be  compared  with 
it  in  any  true  sense.  Even  a  modern  Christian  philosopher 
admits  this.  "The  resolute  cheerfulness  that  can  be  to  a 
certain  extent  captured  and  secured  by  an  effort  of  the  will," 
he  says,  "though  it  is  perhaps  a  more  useful  quality  than 

87 


88  Concerning  Happmess 

natural  joy,  is  not  to  be  compared  with  the  unreasoning,  in- 
communicable rapture,  whicli  sometimes  without  conscious 
effort  or  desire  descends  upon  tlie  spirit  like  sunshine  after 
rain."  The  quality  of  happiness,  like  mercy,  it  appears 
from  this,  is  not  strained  as  the  teachers  make  it,  but  drop- 
peth  like  the  gentle  dew  from  heaven  and  requires  merely 
the  proper  atmosphere  to  resolve  itself  in.  To  say  that  it 
can  accommodate  itself  to  any  condition  is  unscientific  and 
untrue,  and  the  tendency  of  such  teaching  is  to  embarrass 
and  hinder  any  saving  solution  of  the  problem. 

In  fact,  the  thing  that  makes  it  look  as  though  happi- 
ness, as  we  count  it,  was  not  exactly  meant  to  be  our  salva- 
tion, is  that  the  best  of  it  is  liable  to  pall  upon  our  hands 
and  the  hour  arrives  when  the  bravest  of  us  begin  to  ques- 
tion if  the  game  is  worth  the  candle.  It  is  then,  too,  that 
the  test  moment  for  the  menticulturist  comes  in,  and  if  he 
has  not  brought  us  to  a  point  where  we  can  face  life  with- 
out happiness,  the  whole  foundation  of  his  gorgeous  temple 
crumbles.  Has  anybody  said  that  it  is  not  happiness,  but 
the  courage  to  bear  unhappiness,  that  humanity  stands  in 
need  of?  If  not,  life  says  it  at  every  turn,  and  with  all  the 
sugar  coating  they  put  upon  the  pill  it  is  little  more  than 
that  the  New  Thought  people  are  offering  us.  Ah,  they 
are  too  wise  to  dream  that  happiness  can  be  caught  with 
hook  or  line  of  either  mind  or  matter's  casting.  Something 
just  drops  out  of  the  sky  or  tree  top,  or  perhaps  the  post- 
man's bag,  and  there  stands  the  grinning  little  joy  imp  and 
all  the  universe  is  a-twitter  with  him.  About  the  only  thing 
that  can  be  definitely  predicated  of  him  is  that  he  is  more 
likely  to  arrive  when  you  have  made  up  your  mind  that  you 
can  get  along  without  him.  Perhaps,  however,  it  is  just 
as  well  not  to  tell  any  lies  about  not  wanting  him,  and,  above 
all  else,  not  to  say  that  he  is  dead.     There  really  is  some- 


F 

!■  thing  in 


Concerning  Happiness  89 


thing  in  believing  that  he  exists  and  is  at  tlie  heart  of  true 
life  wherever  it  is.  This,  of  course,  is  why  the  pious  ones 
tell  us  that  he  Is  one  with  the  good,  but  as  they  make  such 
a  botch  about  determining  what  the  good  is,  they  are  often, 
as  little  Alice  Carroll  has  it,  "more  stupider"  than  the  im- 
pious in  resolving  the  problem.  Certainly  it  is  only  when 
some  of  them  "turn  their  backs"  that  we  are  able  to  "sneak 
happiness"  from  the  so-called  impious  ones  who  comprehend 
the  situation. 

At  the  best,  happiness  is  an  uncertain  commodity,  and 
if  you  can  not  find  it  in  the  "wind  on  the  heath,  brother," 
or  the  daisy  on  the  hillside,  or  most  of  all,  the  burning  bush 
by  the  wayside,  don't  be  too  sure  that  you  can  evolve  it 
from  those  diamonds,  pomps  and  "conditions"  of  the  wealthy 
which  the  matter-of-fact  philosophers  are  trying  to  per- 
suade you  are  the  essential  part  of  it.  In  fact,  it  is  a 
chance  to  escape  from  their  "conditions"  and  chase  light- 
footed  happiness  to  some  gypsy  cover  for  which  the  ma- 
jority of  these  "fortunate"  ones  are  this  moment  sighing. 
Wealth  and  society  have  pretty  effectually  armed  themselves 
against  happiness  and  well-nigh  chased  it  off  the  face  of  the 
earth.  Nevertheless,  the  good  things  of  life  are  not  to  be 
despised  in  the  case,  and  if  the  menticulturists  can  show  us 
how  tj  grab  them  by  keeping  calm  about  it  there  is  no  use 
in  turning  our  backs  upon  them. 

It  is  not  every  one  who  has  what  a  Western  editor  terms 
the  "mental  endowment"  to  be  fascinated  by  the  nearness 
of  bankruptcy  or  take  supreme  pleasure  in  finding  the  in- 
visible line  between  a  sufficiency  and  a  deficiency,"  and  for 
those  who  need  a  little  gold  dust  or  carbon,  more  or  less,  to 
put  them  at  ease,  it  is  not  ill  to  know  the  kind  of  mental  en- 
dowment that  helps  in  that  direction  also.  The  scientists 
do  say  that  pessimistic  views  of  the  situation  secrete  a  slow 


90  Concemmg  Happmess 

poison  in  the  system  that  makes  the  achievement  of  any  de- 
sire more  difficult,  and  so  perhaps  "thinking  happiness"  is 
not  so  irrational  a  thing  after  all,  unless,  of  course,  one  sits 
down  like  the  old  woman  in  the  story  and  lets  the  more 
active  aspirer  kick  over  his  basket  of  eggs  while  he  is  think- 
ing. Merely  to  get  enough  happiness  or  good  cheer  into 
his  thoughts  to  set  him  moving  appears  to  be  the  main  end 
of  the  happy  philosophy,  and  then,  by  the  time  the  true 
disciple  comes  to  the  place  where  he  finds  that  he  was  fooled 
about  happiness,  he  has  recruited  enough  strength  to  go  on 
without  it.  Courage,  therefore,  is  the  first  and  last  word 
of  the  whole  philosophy,  and  it  has  been  so  ever  since  our 
first  parents  fared  forth  into  the  wilderness  wondering  how 
they  could  go  on  with  their  backs  to  Eden. 


INDIVIDUALITY 

IF  you  want  to  know  what  an  occult  and  unresolved  being 
you  are,  both  to  yourself  and  your  nearest  of  kin,  read 
Prof.  Royce's  scholarly  little  volume  on  "The  Conception 
of  Immortality."  If  you  want  to  know  how  to  attain  a  hope 
of  ever  finding  yourself  and  immortality  together,  read  it 
again  to  the  last  syllable.  Between  whiles  ponder  on  your 
loneliness  and  consider  whether  it  is  worth  while  to  cheat 
yourself  into  the  idea  that  you  know  anybody  or  give  your 
affections  to  anything  but  the  unique  and  elusive  ideal  of 
somebody. 

It  is  all  a  question  of  individuality,  and  though  that  seems 
easy  to  the  superficial  observer,  who  thinks  only  that  you 
are  you  and  I  am  I,  it  takes,  as  Prof.  Royce  shows,  an  "en- 
tire system  of  philosophy"  to  give  it  one  peg  to  hang  on. 
But  when  you  have  compassed  that  philosophy  you  have 
got  at  the  heart  of  all  things  and  attained  not  only  your 
own  unique  place  as  an  individual,  but  your  true  and  ever- 
lasting relation  "to  other  individuals  and  to  the  all-inclusive 
individual  God  himself."  Hence  the  pledge  of  immortality 
in  this  idea  and  demand  of  individuality — uniqueness  of  be- 
ing— which  here  finds  no  fulfillment.  Meantime  there  is  the 
lonesomeness  of  it.  "For  we  love  individuals,  we  trust  in 
them,  we  honor  and  pursue  them,  we  glorify  them  and  hope 
to  know  them.  But  we  know,  if  we  are  sufficiently  thought- 
ful, that  we  can  never  either  find  them  with  our  eyes  or  de- 
fine them  in  our  minds."  And  this  hopelessness  of  finding 
what  we  most  love,  this  loneliness  of  the  soul  in  the  critical 

91 


92  Individuality  ^ 

light  of  life,  "constitutes  one  of  the  deepest  tragedies  of 
human  existence." 

Prof.  Royce  commits  this  tragedy  of  loneliness,  this  mock- 
ing vanity  of  the  search  for  the  true  beloved  mainly  to  the 
"keenly  critical,"  the  "worldly  wise,"  but  in  reality  it  has 
been  the  throbbing  pain  of  all  humanity  since  time  and  love 
began.  The  vain  strivings  "to  find  one  another,"  to  ex- 
press ourselves  to  one  another,  lie  at  the  root  of  half  man's 
bitterest  experiences  and  defeated  days.  The  long  history 
of  art  and  literature  is  little  more  than  the  story  of  their 
efforts  to  help  us  in  this  sad  business,  and  the  gauge  of  their 
success  is  the  exact  measure  of  their  power  in  this  direction. 
It  is  for  this  that  we  fall  down  and  worship  Shakespeare; 
for  this  that  we  forgive  Balzac  his  coarseness.  Browning 
his  hard  rhymes,  Maeterlinck  his  cloudy  symbolisms,  and  for 
this  that  we  rush  madly  after  any  Dudeney  or  Wharton  who 
promises  to  offer  us  some  new  touchstone  of  the  inner  be- 
ing. "Do  we  know  anybody?  Ah,  dear  me,  we  are  very 
lonely  in  the  world,"  murmurs  the  gentle  Thackeray,  and 
every  master  writer  since  writing  began  has  sounded  the 
same  chord.  "Man  is  born  alone,  grows  up  alone,  learns 
alone,  works  alone,  thinks  alone,  dies  alone,"  writes  Walter 
Besant.  "The  only  thing  that  seems  to  take  away  his  lone- 
liness is  his  marriage.  Then,  because  he  has  another  per- 
son always  in  the  house  with  him,  he  feels  perhaps  that  he  is 
not  quite  so  lonely.  It  is  an  illusion;  every  man  is  quite 
alone." 

That  is  the  measure  of  it.  Every  man  is  quite  alone,  and 
too  often  doubly  alone  when  he  has  some  one  in  the  house 
with  him.  Prof.  Royce  is  right.  "An  individual  is  a  being 
that  no  finite  search  can  find.  Not  even  in  case  of  our  most 
trusted  friends,  not  even  after  years  of  closest  intimacy, 
can  men  as  they  now  are  either  define  in  thought  or  find  di- 


^^^H^^B  Individuality  93 

\^m  rectly  presented  in  experience  the  individual  beings  whom 
{^  they  most  love  and  trust."  As  he  quotes  you  from  Brown- 
ing, that  most  excellent  lady  of  your  choice  and  worship  is 
not  to  be  found  even  in  tlie  house  you  "inhabit  together," 
though  you  "search  room  after  room." 

From  the  wing  to  the  center 
She  goes  out  as  you  enter. 

However,  she  goes  somewhere.     Prof.  Royce  is  sure  that 
■  she  is  not  a  pure  abstraction;  she  is  "somehow  certainly 
real,"  and  that  she  is  and  that  you  can  not  find  her  here, 
.   yet  preserve  the  vision  of  her,  is  the  sweet  assurance  of  some 
p  beyond  where  you  shall  find  her.     Wherefore  hang  to  your 
ideals,  cling  to  your  spirit  loves?     Helen  may  desert  you 
for  Paris,  Abelard  prove,  as  Mark  Twain  has  it,  "an  un- 
principled  humbug,"  Launcelot   and   Guinevere   tear   up   a 
king's  household,  but  that  unique  and  glorious  being  who 
represents  to  you  what  nobody  else  ever  was  or  could  be 
still  lives  for  you  "in  a  higher  and  richer  realm"  of  perfected 
being. 

There,  says  Royce,  shall  your  friend's  life  "glow  with 
just  that  unique  position  of  the  divine  that  no  other  life  in 
all  the  world  expresses,"  and  meet  your  first  demand  that 
there  shall  be  none  beside  it.  And  this  because  the  very 
uniqueness  of  the  divine  life  demands  it.  "Just  because 
God  attains  and  wins  and  finds  this  uniqueness,  all  our  lives 
win,  in  our  union  with  him,  the  individuality  which  is  essen- 
tial to  their  true  meaning."  This  is  better  than  being  "swal- 
lowed up  in  Brahm,"  after  tlie  conception  of  the  Hindoo, 
or  even  sharing  in  the  "personality  of  the  absolute,"  after 
the  idea  of  Hegel.  But  why,  since  individuality  and  ideals 
can  only  be  realized  through  union  with  God,  in  the  end  they 
should  not  seek  this  method  in  the  beginning  is  more  than 


94  Individuality/ 

any  of  the  philosophers  can  make  clear  to  us.  All  the  saints 
and  seers  since  Augustine  down  have  been  plainly  declaring 
to  us  that  such  union  was  all  we  needed.  "Restless  till  we 
rest  in  Thee"  is  the  verdict  of  all  who  have  known  man,  or 
in  anywise  read  the  spirit  that  is  within  him.  Nevertheless, 
we  go  chasing  up  and  down  the  earth  in  pursuit  of  the 
"elusive  goal,"  of  an  individual  to  meet  our  needs,  or  sit 
down  in  a  great,  wide,  loneliness  and  stare  into  the  faces  of 
the  specters  we  have  captured,  and  wonder  why  life  is  empty. 
The  tragedy  of  seeking  what  we  most  love  and  finding  it  not 
lies  heavy  upon  us,  while  all  the  time  it  is  nigh  us,  even  at 
the  door. 

By  no  mystic  vision,  says  Prof.  Royce,  can  we  win  our 
union  with  God.  We  must  toil  for  it.  No  doubt.  Yet 
other  voices  have  whispered  that  is  was  simply  to  feel  after 
if  haply  we  might  find  him.  The  "finite  strivings"  that  con- 
sciously intend  "oneness  with  God"  are  vain,  indeed,  if  they 
do  not  consciously  find  oneness  with  Him.  It  is  in  the  silence 
and  the  darkness  and  the  loneliness  of  these  finite  strivings, 
and  gropings,  and  yearnings,  that  no  brother  man  can  un- 
derstand or  lighten,  that  the  soul  most  needs  the  conscious- 
ness of  union  with  the  all-good  and  powerful.  It  may  be  as  set 
forth  that  the  fulfillment  of  that  union  is  "not  here,  not  now, 
in  time  and  amid  the  blind  striving  of  the  present."  But  it 
is  somehow  through  the  darkness  that  the  shining  link  is 
forged  that  binds  man  to  the  eternal,  and,  as  the  poet  tells  us, 

Through  the  dim, 
Close  prison  bars  that  shut  man  from  his  kind 
God  reaches  down  to  make  us  one  with  Him. 


SCIENCE  AND  LAUGHTER 

A  WORLD  of  no  laugliter  is  the  refined  estate  which 
threatens  us.  "Mirth  and  jollity  are  well-nigh  ban- 
ished from  the  globe,"  writes  a  British  scientist  and  "laugh- 
ter holding  both  its  sides"  has  been  kicked  from  circle  to 
circle  of  life's  playhouse  till  even  the  pit  has  incontinently 
turned  it  out  of  doors.  A  mechanical  hand-clapping  of 
solemn,  bored-looking  spectators  is  all  that  the  most  rol- 
licking farce  can  elicit  from  an  audience  of  to-day. 

Man,  as  a  laughing  animal,  is  no  longer  distinguished 
from  the  brute  creation.  Indeed,  science  finds  that  dogs, 
apes  and  other  happy  beasts  can  refresh  themselves  with  a 
grin,  while  care-burdened  man  is  losing  even  the  nmscles 
that  could  shape  themselves  into  a  laugh.  Incidentally,  too, 
the  mind  and  the  morals.  No  man  is  wholly  bad  who  can 
laugli,  said  the  ancient  student  of  his  kind,  and  the  mod- 
ern scientist  is  beginning  to  consider  what,  by  inference, 
he  must  become  when  he  can  not  laugh.  Saturnine,  if  not 
Satanic,  is  the  moral  phase  of  it.  And,  as  for  the  mental, 
the  distance  from  the  grim  troglodyte  to  the  laughing 
philosopher  is  the  measure  of  that.  The  cave  man,  it  is  said, 
did  not  laugh.  It  took  unfathomed  deeps  of  time  and 
thought  to  resolve  him  into  an  Aristophanes  or  a  Rabelais. 
However,  even  "when  the  bird  walks  we  see  that  it  has  wings," 
and,  having  learned  to  laugh,  it  may  not  be  easy  to  wipe  the 
impress  of  that  laugh  out  of  the  human  family.  It  is  a 
curious  circumstance  that  the  cry  of  its  decline  should  come 
at   just   the   time   when    all    creation    is    recommending   the 

95 


96  Science  and  Laughter 

cheerful  act  as  the  escape  from  every  ill  or  hardship  of  mor- 
tal destiny. 

To  "sit  on  tlie  stile  and  continue  to  smile"  is  the  one  pre- 
scribed way  to  "soften  the  heart"  of  any  "terrible  cow"  or 
lion  encountered  in  all  life's  highway.  And  it  is  just  like 
science,  and  the  irony  of  fate,  to  show  us  the  exact  way  to 
save  ourselves,  and  then  declare  that  we  have  lost  the  power 
to  use  it.  It  is  of  a  piece  with  the  heartless  squib  which 
tells  us  to  read  the  irresistible  joke  on  "making  the  best  of 
it,"  and  then  adds  that  it  was  dug  up  in  the  excavations 
near  Nippur.  To  have  lost  the  power  to  smile  over  the 
soothing  reflections  of  the  new  thought  philosophy  is  cer- 
tainly one  of  the  meanest  turns  outrageous  fate  has  served 
us.  Not  to  be  able  to  sit  above  the  ashes  of  our  dead  hopes 
and  smile  that  at  least  we  have  not  a  hair  lip,  as  one  bright 
philosopher,  or  satirist,  invites  us,  is  a  calamity  that  may 
well  claim  the  attention  of  science.  The  time  to  laugh  is 
so  clearly  when  the  lightning  strikes  you  that  it  is  strange 
that  neither  saints  nor  philosophers  found  it  out  earlier. 
Stranger  still  that  the  presiding  deities  at  the  fount  of  true 
laughter  are  shutting  off  our  power  to  laugh,  just  as  we  have 
found  it  out.  The  connection  is  toq  patent  to  escape  the 
suggestion  that  perhaps  they  are  not  altogether  pleased 
with  our  assumed  spirits. 

This  laughing  "that  we  may  not  weep"  is  grand  and 
Byronic,  no  doubt,  but,  somehow,  it  seems  to  be  at  the  core 
of  much  of  the  lost  mirth  and  laughter  of  the  whole  earth. 
Perhaps  there  is  something  too  forced  and  artificial  in  it. 
Like  the  stump  speaker  who  declared  that  he  was  never  so 
strained  as  when  he  kicked  at  nothing,  this  sweet  smiling 
at  everything  or  nothing  may  be  overreaching  itself.  At 
any  rate,  it  is  putting  the  cart  before  the  horse  in  many 
cases,  and  trying  to  make  the  prescribed  smile  take  the  place 


Science  and  Laughter  97 

of  the  energetic  action  that  should  win  it.  "I'm  tired  of 
playing  the  cheerful  idiot  among  pots  and  kettles,"  said  a 
talented  woman  recently,  when  a  reverse  of  fortune  flung  her 
from  parlor  to  kitchen  to  try  the  "contented  spirit"  philoso- 
phy, and  then  she  rose  up  and  conquered  through  her  true 
powers  the  laugh  of  him  who  wins.  It  is  only  when  you  have 
tried  every  other  way  possible  to  propitiate  fate  that  you 
can  afford  to  sit  down  and  ring  defiant  laughter  into  his 
grim  face.  It  is  only  then,  too,  that  he  will  come,  a  smil- 
ing subject,  to  see  "what  you  are  laughing  at."  He  laughs 
best  who  laughs  last,  runs  the  old  adage,  and  some  measure 
of  security  in  the  cheerful  throne  set  up  for  them  is  a  demand 
which  the  disciples  of  the  new  Democritus  may  well  make 
of  him. 

Reduced  to  the  last  analysis,  it  is  mainly  a  chance  to 
laugh  that  the  earth  child  of  any  century  needs.  Give  him 
that,  and  neither  science  nor  society  need  fear  that  he  will 
lose  the  capacity  for  it.  In  truth  the  springs  of  laughter, 
as  of  tears,  lie  too  deep  for  either  of  them.  The  winds 
that  sigh  in  the  pine  trees,  and  whistle  in  the  rushes,  may 
know  the  secret  of  it.  The  clouds  that  weep,, and  the  sun- 
beams that  dance  in  glee,  may  guess  why  one  morn  wakes 
to  unexplainable  deeps  of  sadness,  and  another  to  soft  rap- 
tures of  mysterious  joy.  Mother  nature  and  the  mystic  sis- 
ters of  the  distaff  and  spindle  hold  still  the  threads  that 
flash  gold  or  gray  into  the  fabric  of  man's  life.  But  one 
thing  is  certain,  and  that  is,  that  they  do  not  ask  him  to 
call  black  white,  nor  swear  that  the  mantle  of  gray  or  sable 
is  cheering  to  him  as  the  cloth  of  gold.  Sorrow  may  be  bet- 
ter than  laughter,  yet  none  but  a  new  school  Ananias  will 
pretend  to  say  that  he  likes  it  as  well.  Indeed,  since  laugh- 
ter chased  age  and  death  along  the  plains  of  Gerar,  and 
heaven  made  Sarah  "to  laugh,"  so  that  all  the  world  should 


98  Science  arid  Laughter 

laugh  with  her,  no  son  of  earth  feels  quite  secure  of  his  heri- 
tage if  that  bright  humor  and  laugh  which  Harris  so  ex- 
pressively calls  "a  form  of  tenderness"  be  left  out  of  it. 

A  world  of  no  laughter,  indeed!  Why  man  even  shrinks 
from  a  heaven  with  that  ban  upon  it.  And  shall  he  be  ex- 
pected to  face  the  world  pain  in  the  chill  of  it.  Not  even 
the  mourning  saints  have  asked  it  of  him,  nor  the  prophets 
of  any  age.  The  righteous  shall  laugh  and  be  glad,  is  the 
burden  of  their  lay,  and  the  British  scientist  is  quite  in  its 
refrain  when  he  calls  laughter  "the  most  beautiful  expres- 
sion of  goodness,"  the  one  that  "gives  genuineness  to  virtue 
and  brings  it  nearest"  to  our  human  hearts.  That  it  is 
"the  manna,"  too,  "on  which  good  fellowship  most  loves  to 
feed"  more  hearts  than  his  can  testify,  even  though  such 
manna  is  denied  them.  It  is  no  lack  of  will  or  skill  that  is 
stilling  the  sweet  note  of  honest  laughter  in  the  earth.  The 
impulse  to  smile  in  the  pure  atmosphere  of  smiles  is  not  dead 
in  poor  humanity.  Give  us  a  chance  to  laugh,  oh  complain- 
ing world,  and  science  will  find  no  torpor  in  our  organs. 
Stop  the  fever  fret  and  drive,  the  strain  of  weariness,  the 
oppression  and  the  wrong,  that  choke  the  springs  of  glad- 
ness everywhere,  and  "deterioration  in  the  physical  and  men- 
tal structure"  will  not  prevent  a  choral  strain  of  laughter 
from  welling  up  from  happy  hearts  through  all  creation's 
bounds.  It  is  in  the  "moral  nidus,"  say  the  wise  ones,  that 
laughter  finds  its  colors. 

The  death  of  laughter  and  the  grave  of  joy  is  not  the 
thing  you  promised  us,  oh  sweet  and  smiling  earth.  "Stand 
by  your  early  pledges,  fulfill  your  millennium  whispers  of 
peace  and  good  will  to  all  men,  "feed  pure  love,"  enkindle 
noble  hope,  and,  above  all,  "beget  the  smile  that  has  no  bit- 
terness," or  confess  that  you  have  mocked  humanity  with 
your  own  laughing  skies  and  dimpled  waters,  and,  as  the  an- 


I 


Science  and  Laughter 


99 


cients  declared  of  you,  borne  children  only  to  devour  them. 
The  calm  and  smiling  face  of  nature  in  the  teeth  of  all 
man's  woes  is  a  thing  for  which  he  must  forever  revile  her. 
And  yet,  perhaps,  the  reproach  is  unjust;  for  with  every 
recurring  seed  time  and  harvest  she  is  trying  to  teach  him 
the  saving  truth  that  whatsoever  a  man  soweth  that  shall  he 
also  reap,  and  that  you  can  not  sow  tears  and  dragons' 
teeth  and  reap  laughter. 


LIFE  AND  LITERATURE 

THE  authors,  like  Chronos,  have  taken  to  devouring 
their  children — turning  out  books  by  the  ton,  as  one 
publisher  reckons  it,  they  still  declare  reading  a  lost  art, 
great  books  a  voice  of  the  past,  and  the  idea  of  a  book  in 
any  shape  one  that  the  healthful,  natural  man  rejects. 

Any  one  might  have  known  that  it  would  come  to  this. 
Conversation  has  long  been  declared  a  lost  art,  thinking  has 
been  pronounced  a  disease  and  reading  must  naturally  go 
tlie  way  of  its  intellectual  sisters.  Education  seems  to  be 
the  only  bugbear  left  to  frighten  us,  but  Gerald  Stanley 
Lee  is  dealing  it  some  telling  blows  and  George  Madden  Mar- 
tin prepared  its  finish  when  he  writes  of  Emmy  Lou's  in- 
structors, "Miss  Fanny  was  a  real  person.  The  others  had 
been  teachers."  Life  rather  than  books,  nature  above  all 
training,  form  the  keynote  of  the  new  liberty.  The  joy  of 
living  is  the  main  thing,  and  to  kill  all  our  teachers  the 
nearest  way  to  achieve  it.  Religion  itself  is  not  a  thing  to 
be  "told  to  men."  It  is  but  a  show  to  move  their  special 
wonder  and  set  them  to  "trying  for  themselves"  what  it  may 
be.  Art  still  rides  the  wave,  but  art  which  is  individual  and 
whose  "essential  spiritual  element"  is  "delight,  delight,  de- 
light." To  fiiid  the  spring  of  joy  in  his  own  soul  and  give 
free  play  to  it  is  in  short  the  beginning  and  end  of  the  whole 
philosophy. 

Meantime  he  who  thinks  he  has  a  story  to  teU,  a  message 
to  bear  to  humanity,  can  spout  it  to  the  stars,  or  to  the 
little   fishes.     Life,   of   which   literature   has   been   but   the 

100 


Life  and  Literature  1*0 1 

>  >    > 

clumsy  expression,  is  now  to  reveal  itself  liirougK  shlmn-g' 
eyes  and  pulsing  hearts  that  feel  it.  Man  is  to  live  his 
romance,  not  hunt  it  in  a  book,  and  the  Shakespeare  who 
unlocks  his  heart  with  a  sonnet  is  still  the  "less  Shakespeare" 
for  his  pains.  They  had  no  poet  and  they  lived,  no  lawgiver 
and  they  loved  one  another,  no  preacher  and  they  found  the 
truth,  is  the  story  of  the  new  man  to  be  written  not  in 
books  or  on  tables  of  stones,  but  fleshly  tablets  of  the  heart. 
Already  souls  have  been  discovered  in  Mulberry  Street,  and 
even  in  Fifth  avenue,  and  Jacob  Ries  declares  that  one 
throb  of  the  human  heart  is  worth  a  whole  book  of  sociol- 
ogy and  all  the  stuff  men  write  to  reduce  each  other  to  items 
in  infallible  systems.  "God  wastes  no  history,"  says  Brooks. 
Angels  do  not  write  books;  life  and  character  are  the  only 
volumes  that  can  truly  record  the  truths  and  lessons  of  the 
ages.  "Ye  are  our  epistles,  known  and  read  of  all  men," 
said  Paul  to  the  Corinthians.  Socrates  and  Christ  wrote  no 
books,  left  not  a  scrap  of  writing,  and  the  round  world  has 
been  molded  by  them.  To  follow  the  currents  of  humanity 
is  the  only  hope  of  literature,  and  the  man  of  to-day  is  the 
true  story  of  all  the  past.  To  know  only  consists  "in  open- 
ing out  a  way  whereby  the  imprisoned  splendor  may  escape" 
and  nature  more  truly  than  art  can  find  that  way. 

Oh,  fret  not  after  knowledge. 

I  have  none. 
And  yet — the  evening  listens, 

sings  Keats'  thrush.  Once  man  swings  into  the  harmony 
of  his  own  being  the  work  of  all  his  tutors  will  be  done;  and 
it  is  time,  no  doubt,  that  the  Gospel  should  be  heeded  which 
saith,  "Much  study  is  a  weariness  of  the  flesh,"  and  of  the 
making  of  many  books  there  should  be  an  end.  At  least 
to  pause  long  enough  to  get  some  new  experience  or  ecstasy 


1^2  Life  and  Literature 

<»£'l>iG''to  ^lit.Hvtb'thfem  would  seem  to  be  the  part  of  wisdom, 
and  it  is  to  this  end  no  doubt  that  the  philosophers  in  the 
business  are  trying  to  spur  man  on  to  dip  his  soul  in  some 
fierce  caldron  of  passion  or  delight  that  they  may  secure  a 
new  rapture  if  not  a  "new  shudder"  for  their  exhausted 
stock.  To  go  on  repeating  the  same  joy  and  the  same  sor- 
row, the  same  longing  and  the  same  unrest,  which  the  old 
Greeks  weighed  in  the  mythics  of  life  long  ago  is  beginning 
to  pall  upon  the  writers  themselves,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
long-suffering  readers.  To  cease  the  eternal  quest  in  the 
measured  strains  of  literature  and  pursue  it  to  the  bound- 
less ocean  of  life  is  not  a  bad  idea  to  dawn  upon  some  of 
them.  For,  doubt  it  who  will,  the  life  secret  that  all  the 
poets  and  writers  of  all  ages  have  been  blindly  feeling  after 
in  song  and  story,  is  throbbing  somewhere  in  the  undersoul 
of  being,  and  who  knows  what  radiant  day  or  fair  new  year 
may  bring  it  to  the  surface .^^  Already  the  joy  bells  of  the 
round  earth  are  beginning  to  ring  its  chimes,  and  the  psy- 
<;Jiical  wave  in  all  thought  and  philosophy  to  herald  its  com- 
ing. One  strong  triumphant  soul,  not  to  write  about  it, 
but  to  discover  it  in  living  it,  is  all  that  is  needed.  And, 
oh,  the  longing  souls  that  are  waiting  for  that  one. 

It  is  a  marvel  how  the  great  Teacher  who  said,  "Who- 
soever liveth  and  believeth  in  me  shall  never  die,"  ever  es- 
caped from  the  clamors  of  the  dying  in  all  directions.  A 
greater  marvel  still  that  the  mystic  but  philosophic  truth 
of  his  words  has  but  just  begun  to  dawn  upon  a  perishing 
world.  Yet  the  truths  that  set  men  free  must  come  slowly 
to  the  toiling  masses,  say  all  the  prophets,  but  that  is  be- 
cause they  have  forgotten  the  Scripture,  which  saith  that 
when  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  come  the  violent  take  it  by 
force.  Books,  preachers,  poets  may  pipe  or  prose  forever 
about  the  secret  springs  of  life,  but  he  who  breaks  the  way 


Life  and  Literature  103 


r 

^B  to  them,  tastes  them  for  himself,  alone  knows  of  their  sweet- 
^K  ness  and  reality.  "Look  in  thy  heart  and  write,"  was  the 
counsel  of  tlie  bookish  past,  and  wise  was  the  writer  who 
heeded  it.  But,  look  in  thy  heart  and  live  is  the  cry  of  the 
glorious  present,  and  yet  absolutely  to  do  this  one  must  get 
away  as  far  as  possible  from  nearly  all  the  writers,  and  a 
large  proportion  of  the  teachers  and  preachers.  Such  per- 
versions of  the  human  heart  and  its  affections  as  have  been 

I^P  palmed  off  on  us  as  the  real  thing  by  our  masters  and  men- 
tors would  incline  us  to  look  into  Tophet  or  Hecate's  cal- 
dron  rather  than  waste  time  on  such  inner  deformities. 

\^m  No  doubt  it  is  this  violence  done  to  the  heart  and  its  pure 
life  currents  by  the  so-called  makers  of  literature  that  leads 
some  of  the  more  earnest  of  our  writers  to  doubt  if  the 
natural  man  was  ever  meant  to  sit  down  and  read  a  book. 
Like  poor  Francesca,  playing  with  Greek  fire  "to  bring  to 
birth  new  ardors  in  her  soul,"  it  is  an  element  of  wild  de- 
struction that  the  natural  man  too  often  finds  himself  sport- 
ing with  when  he  sits  down  to  read  a  book.  "Delight"  may 
be  indeed,  as  Arthur  Jerome  Eddy  declares,  "the  essential 
spiritual  element"  of  art,  as  it  ever  is  of  life,  but,  ah,  it  is 
its  "raiment  of  pure  joy"  that  the  exiled  soul  is  seeking, 
and  who,  of  all  our  artists,  knows  how  to  weave  for  it  that 
white  and  seamless  garment?  "If  I  were  to  tell  you  what  I 
really  think  of  the  best  books,  I  am  afraid  you  would  call 
me  the  greatest  literary  heretic  or  an  utter  ignoramus," 
said  that  great  student  of  language  and  literature.  Max 
Muller.  "I  know  few  books,  if  any,  which  I  should  call  good 
from  beginning  to  end."  The  truth  is  that  it  has  been  too 
much  the  imperfect,  the  incomplete  man  who  has  made  our 
books  for  us.  Life,  with  all  its  aspirations,  all  its  passions, 
all  its  heroisms,  has  not  yet  swept  him  up  to  those  celestial 
heights  where  he  could  see  and  interpret  it  in  all  its  beauty 


104  Life  and  Literature 

and  fullness.  It  is  life  that  must  grow  greater,  clearer, 
surer  and  diviner  to  the  spirit's  sight  before  the  true  book 
shall  be  bom  to  us.  But  perhaps  when  that  time  comes  we 
shall  need  no  books,  whether  it  be  this  year  or  the  next. 


I 


ENEMIES   AND   REVENGES 

THE  old-fashioned  idea  appears  still  to  prevail  that  a 
man  can  dispose  of  his  enemy  by  killing  him.  Also, 
that  he  can  get  away  from  himself  by  blowing  his  own  brains 
out.     Both  ideas  are  scorned  by  the  enlightened. 

If  the  red  slayer  thinks  he  slays, 
Or  if  the  slain  thinks  he  is  slain, 
They  know  not  well  the  subtle  ways 
I  keep,  and  pass,  and  turn  again. 

Thus  Brahm  punctured  the  bubble  long  ago,  and  science 
has  been  riddling  it  with  shot  wherever  it  appeared,  ever 
since.  And  yet  to-day  not  the  smallest  sheet  issues  from 
the  morning  press  without  reeking  with  the  tale  of  murders 
and  suicides  the  world  over.  Lombroso  and  his  school  call 
this  red  peril  disease,  or  insanity,  and  there  is  no  ques- 
tion that  some  vile  disorder  is  in  it.  Yet,  while  there  is  no 
telling  whose  son  or  brother  may  waken  up  at  morn  or  in 
the  dead  of  night  in  the  worst  throes  of  the  malady,  it  is 
really  risking  too  much  to  trust  to  the  uncertain  diagnosis 
of  the  criminologists. 

As  there  is  considerable  method  in  the  madness,  too,  a 
possibility  of  reasoning  together  over  the  towering  unrea- 
son in  the  principle  of  it  may  yet  be  left  us.  It  is,  of  course, 
a  general  blindness,  despite  all  science's  teaching,  to  the  true 
laws  of  being  that  lies  at  the  root  of  the  trouble.  A  few 
glimpses  into  Dante's  universe  of  moral  order,  where  the 
deed  returns  upon  the  head  of  the  doer,  and  the  murderer 

105 


106  Enemies  and  Revenges 

swelters  in  the  blood  he  has  spilt,  or  the  suicide  who  kills 
himself  because  he  is  "tired  of  buttoning  and  unbuttoning," 
dwells  ever  in  the  darkness  and  quagmire  of  his  own  glooms 
and  inactivities,  might  change  perhaps  the  effort  of  mad 
humanity  to  call  death  to  its  assistance  in  accomplishing 
ends  that  life  denies  it.  In  a  rude  mining  camp  of  the  far 
West  a  discouraged  miner  rose  up  one  black  morning  and 
walked  boldly  into  the  eating  room  of  a  newcomer,  who  had 
flung  out  the  enticing  sign,  "Meals  at  All  Hours,"  to  the 
hungry  gold  diggers.  "Stranger,"  he  said,  going  up  to  the 
counter,  "I  have  had  devilish  hard  times  lately.  I  think 
I'll  kill  somebody  to  change  my  luck."  And  at  that  he  shot 
the  peaceful  restaurant  man  through  the  heart.  The  min- 
ers consummated  the  desperado's  luck  by  hanging  him  to 
the  nearest  tree,  but  the  logic  of  his  performance  was  about 
the  same  as  that  which  actuates  every  crazy  creature  who 
tries  the  death  remedy  for  his  ills.  The  odds  of  life  have 
gone  against  him  and  he  kills  himself,  or  somebody  else,  in 
some  mad  dream  of  changing  his  luck.  That  there  is  noth- 
ing in  death  to  change  anything  in  the  line  of  conscious 
being  is  a  reflection  away  beyond  him.  Yet  even  to  the  most 
clouded  intellect  it  would  seem  to  be  clear  that  it  is  life  and 
not  death  that  can  enable  a  man  to  eff^ect  his  ends,  either 
toward  himself  or  toward  his  enemies,  and  life  at  its  highest. 
The  true  way  to  revenge  oneself  on  an  enemy  is  to  let  him 
live,  and  practice  the  Christian  virtues  upon  him.  If  that 
does  not  make  him  shrivel  up  and  fall  off^  the  earth,  or  the 
part  of  it  that  you  inhabit,  no  amount  of  lead  in  his  body 
will.  It  may  seem  an  easy  matter  to  kill  your  enemies,  but 
unless  you  can  do  it,  as  some  people  tell  us  the  good  Lord 
does,  by  destroying  both  soul  and  body  in  fire,  it  is  no  use 
taking  savage  liberties  with  the  body.  Lacking  this  power, 
it  is  really  safest  to  "agree  with  thine  adversary  quickly," 


Enermes  and  Revenges  107 

lest  by  your  efforts  to  harm  him  he  secures  the  spiritual  mas- 
IKtery  in  the  case,  and  hands  you  over  to  the  Judge  of  Life, 
and  the  Judge  casts  you  into  that  prison  where  every  soul 
must  languish  that  does  the  slightest  wrong  to  another  soul. 
Verily,  thou  shalt  not  come  out  thence  till  thou  hast  paid  the 
uttermost  farthing.  For  that  is  the  law  of  life,  running 
from  the  womb  to  man,  and  the  philosopher  is  right  who 
tells  us  that  there  is  "No  god  dare  wrong  a  worm." 

The  danger  in  an  enemy  is  not  so  much  that  he  may  wrong 
you  as  that  you  may  be  surprised  into  doing  some  despicable 
wrong  to  him  which  will  turn  you  back  on  your  whole  up- 
ward course  for  its  expiation.  The  greatest  of  the  psy- 
chologists knew  what  he  was  doing  for  man  when  he  taught 
him  to  love  his  enemies,  and  that  wise  old  Publius  discerned 
'^^  the  higher  gains  in  the  matter  when  he  said  "it  is  an  un- 
I^B  happy  lot  which  finds  no  enemies."  "I  had  a  friend,"  was 
the  explanation  which  one  sweet  soul  gave  for  all  the  riches 
and  graces  of  life  and  character  that  came  to  him,  but  "I 
had  an  enemy"  is  ofttimes  the  secret  of  higher  greatness  and 
development.  The  most  baffling  enemy,  of  course,  to  deal 
with  is  the  enemy  within  one's  self.  Armies  and  navies  can 
not  rid  one  of  this  foe,  and  the  pessimistic  weaklings  who 
are  trying  to  throttle  him  with  bed  ropes  are  getting  farther 
and  farther  away  from  any  hope  in  the  case.  "  'Tis  life 
of  which  their  nerves  are  scant,"  and  to  ask  death  to  sup- 
ply the  want  is  the  last  lunacy.  One  bold  grasp  for  them- 
selves of  that  full  orb  of  life  which  they  are  petitioning 
fate,  worlds  and  red  devils  to  bring  them,  would  end  the 
battle  and  give  them  suns,  stars  and  eternities  to  wait  upon 
them.  It  is  because  he  does  not  know  himself  and  the  powers 
that  are  within  him  that  man  sends  such  puerile  wails  into 
the  universe. 

Do  not  try  to  save  your  brother  by  sermons  or  criticism. 


108  Enemies  and  Revenges 

says  the  priest  of  Brahmin.  Tell  him  who  and  what  he  is 
and  he  will  save  himself,  and  it  is  certain  that  he  who  knows 
his  life  to  be  one  with  the  eternal  will  not  try  to  kill  himself 
with  a  jack-knife.  It  is  a  great  thing  to  go  about  feeling 
that  the  infinite  spirit  of  the  universe  is  interested  in  what 
you  do,  says  Dr.  Hale,  and  then,  he  adds,  with  an  uncon- 
scious sarcasm  perhaps  upon  the  pessimistic  literature  of 
to-day,  that  this  feeling  is  not  to  be  found  in  books,  but  in 
the  open  air,  in  the  breaking  off  of  a  dandelion,  the  heark- 
ening to  a  bird  song.  The  farmer  boy  of  the  wide  West 
does  not  curse  his  fate,  he  tells  us,  and  if  the  farmer  girl 
does,  it  must  be  because  she  gives  more  attention  to  the  bath- 
room floor  and  the  scrub  brush  than  to  that  "floor  of  heaven 
thick  inlaid  with  patines  of  bright  gold,"  which  nowhere 
shines  with  more  seductive  dreams  of  all  infinity  and  might 
than  in  that  magic  West,  where  plain  and  sky  melt  into  one 
vast  and  boundless  immensity,  or  mountain  peaks  in  still 
and  awful  grandeur  "pierce  the  white  radiance  of  eternity." 
To  lose  himself  in  the  bosom  of  the  infinite  is  the  only  hope 
that  science,  nature  and  religion  offer  man  in  his  effort  to 
get  away  from  that  smaller  ego  that  troubles  him  so.  And 
meantime  the  yet  grander  truth  remains  that  only  in  such 
loss  can  he  ever  truly  find  himself. 


THE   GOSPEL   OF  DESPAIR 

EVIDENTLY  it  is  not  all  that  labor  and  are  heavy 
laden  who  care  to  have  their  burdens  aired  by  the  nov- 
elists. Miss  Mary  E.  Wilkins  was  taken  to  task  by  the 
New  England  shoemaker,  and  the  "Portion  of  Labor"  she 
had  assigned  to  him  most  incontinently  scorned  by  his 
criticisms.  Any  shoemaker  could  write  a  better  novel,  he 
averred  indignantly,  wliich,  considering  the  kind  of  talent 
she  ascribed  to  the  shoe  man,  is  rather  hard  on  Mary  Wil- 
kins. It  is  the  retort  discourteous  that  might  be  expected, 
however,  from  the  exaggerated  pictures  that  are  drawn  in 
many  cases  of  the  "other  half"  of  humanity  by  that  com- 
plaisant upper  half  that  really  knows  nothing  about  it. 
With  the  best  intention  in  the  world  to  help  the  matter, 
many  good  souls  have  put  it  almost  beyond  the  reach  of  help 
by  the  impenetrable  blackness  flung  about  it,  and  it  is  not 
strange  that  a  few  voices  from  this  charnel  house  of  all  joy 
or  comeliness,  to  which  writers  have  assigned  laborer,  tramp, 
bankrupt,  thief  or  outcast  in  a  body,  should  send  forth  a 
cry  against  being  considered  in  such  a  dread  and  "bony 
light."  Even  Tommy  Atkins  has  come  back  upon  his  cham- 
pion in  many  cases,  with  small  thanks  for  the  pains  that 
took  him  out  of  the  ranks  of  "the  thin  red  line,"  and  it  is  said 
that  the  very  worm  of  the  slums  is  beginning  to  turn  upon  the 
upper  class  slummer,  who  is  crowding  it  too  deeply  into  the 
slime  of  the  street  for  the  benefit  (?)  of  the  cause. 

"The  slummer's  illusions,"  as  one  writer  has  it,  which  pic- 
ture a  wailing,  warring  mass  of  humanity  weltering  in  filth 

109 


110  The  Gospel  of  Despair 

and  vice,  while  only  curses,  groans  and  pistol  shots  fill  the 
air,  are  yielding  to  a  comprehension  of  "men  and  women 
going  about  their  ordinary  work  in  an  ordinary  way,  quietly 
putting  up  with  the  inevitable,"  which,  in  their  case,  is  bad 
enough,  heaven  knows,  but  not  so  bad  as  to  make  them  unfit 
for  decent  eyes  to  look  upon.  A  young  society  girl,  going 
out  last  summer  with  tracts  and  lessons  in  behavior  to  the 
children  of  a  country  settlement  recruited  from  the  city 
slums,  declared  that  the  main  difference  she  found  in  them 
was  that  they  were  more  eager  to  learn  and  less  bold  in 
their  manners  and  questions  than  the  children  of  the  fash- 
ionable set,  with  whom  she  had  labored  in  the  Sunday 
schools.  Human  nature  has  its  good  and  bad  traits  every- 
where, and  even  that  "unspeakable  Gorky"  finds  some  sparks 
of  the  divine  fire  in  the  most  blackened  and  beastly  specimens 
that  have  ever  been  called  up  to  pollute  the  pages  of  slum 
literature.  The  sin  and  stupidity  of  burying  the  objects  of 
mission  work  in  their  own  slime  is  pre-eminently  set  forth, 
however,  in  the  case  of  this  new  luminary  from  the  pits. 
For,  with  all  the  scintillations  from  Schopenhauer  and 
Nietzsche  that  he  flashes  through  them  in  exploiting  his  own 
philosophy,  the  conclusion  is  inevitable  that  they  are  only 
fit  for  the  lake  that  burneth  with  fire  and  brimstone,  and 
that,  to  "root  them  out  of  existence,"  as  one  of  their  own 
prophets  has  said,  is  the  only  way  to  save  society  from  such 
moral  lepers.  And  is  it  for  this  that  Gorky  came  up  from 
the  abyss  and  was  hailed  as  the  "literary  Messiah"  who  was 
to  lead  his  poor  brethren  of  the  night  out  of  their  moral 
wilderness .? 

Indeed  should  it  be  for  this  anywhere  that  authors  or 
artists,  or  so-called  reformers,  go  down  to  the  underworld 
with  palette,  pen  or  tract  ?  If  it  is  but  to  hunt  the  sores  and 
putrefactions  of  humanity  and  proclaim  them  irremediable. 


The  Gospel  of  Despair  111 

with  the  awful  stolidity  of  the  fatalist,  or  even  the  doom- 
promising  dogmatist,  to  what  end  are  our  eyes  invited  to 
rest  upon  such  spectacles,  or  the  writhing  victims  of  them 
called  up  to  furnish  them?  Even  as  subjects  for  strong 
art  there  is  no  virtue  in  them,  unless  through  them  in  some 
way  the  healing  gleam  of  that  eternal  beauty  and  light 
wherein  true  art  reposes  can  be  made  to  shine.  What  then 
is  to  be  said  of  an  artist  who  setting  out  like  Gorky  with 
this  high  thought  in  his  mind  yet  misses  the  aim,  and  turns 
the  awful  but  heroic  figures  of  his  first  sketches  into  rant- 
ing and  loathsome  prophets  of  anarchy  and  rebellion  pro- 
nouncing their  own  doom  and  extinction  in  his  subsequent 
flights? 

Not  so  does  Tolstoi,  of  whom  he  was  proclaimed  the  suc- 
cessor, handle  the  promethean  spark  in  his  poor  downtrod- 
den serfs.     Not  so  did  Victor  Hugo  work  out  the  redemp- 
tion of  his  remarkable  ex-convict.     Not  so  did  Dickens  lift 
up  the  poor  and  oppressed  in  all  the  hovels  and  workshops 
of  England.     Not   so  does  Dante  treat  even  the  souls   in 
hades,  who  dwell  "content  in  fire"  because  they  discern  the 
way  to  Paradise  that  lies  through  it.     And  this  is  the  con- 
demnation of  the  realist  and  would-be  "Messiahs"  of  to-day 
who  take  up  the  cause  of  the  outcast  and  the  unfortunate 
whom  perhaps  society's  blind  and  brutal  forces  have  made 
what  they  are,  that  they  steal  their  last  chance  to  placate 
human  help  and  sympathy  by  wiping  out  every  spark  of 
humanity,  to  say  nothing  of  divinity,  within  them  and  leav- 
ing them  to  no  better  nature  than  that  of  the  beast  that 
perisheth.     And  that  too  when  in  the  fluctuations  of  the 
social  and  economic  systems  of  the  hour,  all  the  lines  of 
rank  and  class  are  continually  shifting — ^when  the  tramp  at 
the  door  may  be,  perchance,  the  'varsity  boy  out  on  a  vaca- 
tion job,  when  Gorky  himself  was   educated  and  inspired 


112  The  Gospel  of  Despair 

by  a  cook,  and  the  Lazarus  of  to-day  is  more  than  liable  to 
be  the  Dives  of  to-morrow. 

Indeed  the  plaint  of  hopeless  degradation  anywhere,  com- 
ing either  from  oppressed  or  oppressor,  is  unwarranted  in  a 
world  of  free  will  and  the  immanent  spirit  of  the  divine 
throbbing  in  all  being.  Especially  should  one  who  has 
proven  the  power  of  Godlike  will  to  break  through  even 
Russian  bands  and  bars,  be  slow  to  preach  the  gospel  of 
despair  and  negation  to  his  struggling  brethren.  And, 
above  all,  should  he  halt  at  the  awful  mistake  of  putting 
them  beyond  the  pale  of  human  brotherhood  and  writing 
them,  in  all  the  colors  of  beasts  and  demons,  as  "Creatures 
Who  Have  Been  Men."  God  himself  put  no  such  brand 
as  that  upon  even  the  head  of  Cain.  It  was  to  save  him 
from  becoming  a  vagabond  and  a  fugitive  that  he  set  the 
mark  in  his  forehead.  ''Lest  any  finding  him  should  kill 
him,"  runs  the  tender  sentence,  and  why,  then,  are  men  and 
prophets  setting  such  brands  upon  their  fellows  that  noth- 
ing but  killing  them  on  sight  seems  left  in  the  case.?  Un- 
less, indeed,  they  can  put  the  stamp  of  the  brotherhood 
upon  them  in  some  way,  however  blurred,  begrimed  or  dis- 
figured by  woe  or  crime  it  may  be,  there  is  little  use  in  go- 
ing down  into  the  abyss  or  coming  up  from  the  abyss  to 
spread  the  story  of  the  lost  and  fallen. 

The  greatest  of  the  reformers  have  ever  held  that  the 
human  soul  can  never  wholly  shed  the  fragrance  of  the  para- 
dise from  which  it  has  been  expelled,  and  certainly  it  is  in 
the  strength  bi  that  belief  alone  that  any  intelligent  effort 
can  be  brought  to  bear  upon  either  class  or  individual  from 
whom  that  fragrance  seems  to  have  fled.  That  not  all  re- 
formers or  writers  know  how  to  discern  it,  and  in  their 
blindness  make  fearful  havoc  of  the  cause  or  class  they  un- 
dertake to   speak   for,  may  be  good   and   sufficient   reason 


The  Gospel  of  Despair  118 

why  even  a  shoemaker  should  leave  his  last  to  come  out  and 
arrest  the  general  tendency  to  knock  a  man  down  in  order 
to  save  him.  The  sorriest  of  life's  unfortunates  may  have 
a  remnant  of  pride  left  to  suffer  by  such  a  process,  and 
the  intelligent  laborer  at  the  shop,  like  the  intelligent  hus- 
bandman with  the  hoe,  may  object  to  being  pictured  as 
"A  thing  that  neither  feels  nor  thinks." 


ENVIRONMENT 

NEXT  to  heredity,  environment  is  the  grand  boon  to 
the  problem  hunter.  Everything  occult  that  can  not 
be  resolved  into  some  atavistic  wonder  or  mystery  can  be 
dumped  into  the  deep  well  of  environment,  to  be  fished  for 
by  every  truth  seeker.  Moreover,  environment  is  an  avail- 
able force  for  the  individual  to  conjure  by.  Heredity,  like 
damnation  by  election,  is  a  power  beyond  him;  but  en- 
vironment, like  free  will,  can  be  thrown  in  to  save  him.  No 
one  can  get  away  from  his  grandfather,  but  who  is  obliged 
to  sit  down  in  the  vicinity  of  Mount  Pelee.'^  That  we  all 
do  it  in  one  way  or  another  is  a  defect  that  is  in  ourselves, 
not  in  our  stars. 

When  God  turned  man  out  of  Eden  because  the  place  had 
become  dangerous  and  alien  to  him,  he  showed  him  what 
manner  of  wisdom  and  care  he  should  exercise  in  choos- 
ing his  environment,  and  gave  him  the  whole  wide  earth  for 
that  choice.  Nevertheless,  if  there  is  a  forbidden  tree  or 
sociable  devil  to  be  found  anywhere,  it  is  directly  there 
that  the  ordinary  mortal  will  plant  himself  and  his  garden. 
And  as  for  the  alien,  the  unpropitious  atmosphere,  con- 
sider how  persistently  the  excellent  of  the  earth  will  drop 
themselves  into  it  and  stick.  One  of  the  commonest  laments 
we  hear  uttered  over  thwarted  lives  is  that,  under  other  con- 
ditions or  surroundings,  the  individual  might  have  been 
great.  What  business,  then,  had  he  not  to  hunt  those  con- 
ditions, or,  with  the  sagacity  of  even  the  common  spider, 
tear  up  the  web  that  proved  unfit  for  him.'' 

114 


I 


Environment  115 


Nothing,  indeed,  in  all  creation  is  so  dull  as  man  in  cling- 
ing to  a  poor  situation.  Even  the  flowers  of  the  field  in- 
sist upon  their  own  soil  and  air,  and  what  some  one  calls 
"the  ancestral  remedy  of  flight"  is  known  to  all  the  animal 
kingdom.  Only  man  will  drop  into  a  wholly  black  and  bar- 
ren corner  and  plod  on  there  forever.  Indirectly,  too,  the 
very  efforts  of  his  higher  teachers  abet  him  in  the  folly. 
**The  mind  is  its  own  place,  and  in  itself  can  make  a  heaven 
of  hell,"  he  is  loftily  reminded,  regardless  of  the  fact  that 
in  a  heaven  all  made  for  it  the  mind  could  go  on  to  yet 
grander  achievements  than  denying  its  environment.  It 
may  be  great  to  rise  above  one's  surroundings,  however  op- 
ressive  they  are,  but  that  is  when  there  is  no  chance  to  get 
away  from  them.  While  there  is  a  loophole  of  escape  left, 
sagacity  is  shown  in  finding  it.  It  is  only  when  you  can 
not  run  away  from  your  troublesome  neighbors,  your  cred- 
itors, or  perhaps  even  your  creaky-boot  husband  that  it  be- 
comes really  brilliant  to  sit  down  and  look  them  into  thin 
air,  and  let  your  own  mortal,  or  immortal,  mind  fill  the 
landscape. 

"Submission  to  what  people  call  their  lot  is  simply  ig- 
noble," says  that  delightful  Elizabeth,  and  it  is  the  crown- 
ing lesson  of  that  garden  experiment  in  environment  which 
showed  her  that  bread  and  butter  which  is  "devoid  of  charm 
in  a  drawing  room"  becomes  "ambrosia  eaten  under  a  tree." 
To  find  the  place  where  your  bread  and  butter  lot  can  take 
on  ambrosial  flavor  is  the  nice  secret  of  life  and  happiness 
for  people  who  are  made  subtly  susceptible  to  every  wind 
that  blows  or  odor  that  floats  through  the  moist  airs  of 
spring.  Not  till  science  can  more  eff*ectually  reduce  the 
world  to  "will  and  idea"  can  mortals  aff*ord  to  ignore  those 
mighty  influences  of  "sense  and  outward  things"  which  play 
upon  them  almost  unawares,  turning  joy  to  sorrow,  or  sor- 


116  Environment 

row  to  joy  by  some  passing  of  a  cloud  fleet  o'er  the  rose  of 
dawn,  or  trickle  of  a  sunbeam  through  the  chill  dark  of  a 
deep  woods. 

Poets  and  musicians  and  finely  strung  natures  every- 
where feel  most  deeply  this  influence  of  the  external,  but 
that  the  most  phlegmatic  are  not  insensible  to  it  many  a 
lesson  of  daily  life  and  history  reveals  to  us.  But  recently 
a  sad  story  ran  through  the  newspapers  of  an  aged  couple, 
who  after  years  of  sorrow,  wandered  back  to  the  home  of 
their  first  youth  and  love,  a  little  vine-wreathed  cottage  by 
the  sea,  that  had  been  their  bridal  bower.  Here  they  hoped 
to  bury  in  the  tender  associations  of  the  place  the  terrible 
losses  and  bereavements  that  in  their  later  life  had  come  to 
tliem.  But,  alas !  they  had  forgotten  Dante's  famous  lines, 
"There  is  no  sorrow  like  remembering  a  happy  time  in  mis- 
ery," and  soon  they  found  the  place,  with  its  fitting  ghosts 
of  lost  delight,  so  insupportable  that  they  deliberately  killed 
themselves  and  were  found  lying  dead  together  in  their 
bridal  chamber. 

It  may  not  be  great,  it  may  not  be  heroic,  but  to  run 
away  from  memories,  and  from  sorrows,  and  bereavements, 
is  sometimes  the  only  way  to  endure  them,  or  escape  "the 
death  in  life  of  days  that  are  no  more."  Nor  is  it  wholly 
true,  either,  that  it  is  but  to  change  the  place  and  not  the 
pain  that  the  flight  is  made,  for  new  scenes  and  new  associa- 
tions aff*ect  the  soul  in  spite  of  itself  and  in  a  wider  sense 
than  the  old  poet  intended,  it  stands  approved  that  he  who 
fights  in  the  battle  of  life  "and  runs  away  will  live  to  fight 
another  day."  Adjustment  to  one's  environment,  adapta- 
tion of  the  internal  to  the  external,  has  long  been  declared 
a  law  of  life,  but  how  could  there  be  any  progressive  being 
save  in  the  changing  environment  for  the  changing  and  en- 
larging creature?     The  poet's  invocation,  "Build  thee  more 


w 


Environment  117 

stately  mansions,  O,  my  soul,  as  the  swift  seasons  roll," 
lias  a  temporal  as  well  as  spiritual  significance,  and  the 
love  man  has  for  beautifying  and  enriching  his  home,  as 
his  intellectual  needs  increase,  is  directly  in  the  line  of  all 
Imman  progress. 

"Another  day,  anotlier  way,"  runs  Leife's  definition  of 
progress,  and  with  all  the  lurking  sarcasm  in  it  it  breathes 
the  principle  of  true  growth.  Almost  any  change  is  better 
than  no  change  at  all  in  a  state  that  falls  short  of  per- 
fection. Even  love  can  almost  be  forgiven  its  fickle  and 
fluctuating  ways,  considering  that  it  finds  nothing  perfect 
to  fasten  itself  upon  here.  It  is  well,  however,  that  men 
should  fling  it  flowers,  and  smiles,  and  rosy  off^erings,  and 
if  they  would  but  keep  it  in  the  growing  light  of  such  en- 
vironment it  might  live  a  little  longer,  even  in  earth's  alien 
atmosphere.  It  is  too  often  for  lack  of  its  vital  breath  of 
beauty,  sunshine  and  gladness  that  it  languishes  under  our 
dun  skies.  So  long  as  lovers  can  keep  the  glow  of  en- 
thusiasm, winsomeness  and  song  alive  for  it,  they  can  take 
almost  any  other  liberties  with  it  they  please.  It  is  when 
it  comes  to  heaviness,  "jar  and  fret"  that  "love  is  made  a 
vain  regret."  Say  what  you  will,  too,  of  its  ethereal  and 
exalted  nature,  environment  does  count  with  it,  at  least 
among  creatures  of  a  material  world. 

Love  in  a  hut,  with  water  and  a  crust, 
Is,  Love  forgive  us !  cinders,  ashes,  dust, 

cries  Keats,  and  there  is  too  much  truth  in  it  to  warrant 
the  building  of  much  romance  on  such  a  combination.  It  is 
a  truth,  too,  that  points  the  final  lesson  upon  the  power 
of  environment,  for  if  love  can  not  overcome  it  nothing  else 
can.  "I  am  going  a  long  way,"  says  sad  King  Arthur,  when 
royal  life  and  love  had  failed  him, 


118  Environment  ' 

To  the  island- valley  of  Avilion,  that  lies, 
Deep  meadow'd,  happy,  fair,  with  orchard  lawns, 
And  bowery  hollows,  crown'd  with  summer  sea. 
Where  I  will  heal  me  of  my  grievous  wound. 

It  may  not  be  given  to  all  sufferers  to  hunt  the  island- 
valley  of  Avilion  to  cure  their  wounds.  But  at  least  they 
need  not  plant  themselves  beside  all  manner  of  smoky  vol- 
canoes and  rumbling  cities  and  wait  till  the  eruption  is  upon 
them  before  they  take  to  their  heels  and  fly. 


I 


SOA 
eve 


THE  RIDDLE  OF  LIFE 

OME  800  years  ago  one  of  the  gentlest  scholars  who 
ever  wrestled  with  the  darkness  of  the  Middle  Ages  died 
sorrowing,  because  he  "had  to  leave  unsolved  the  nature  of 
the  human  soul."  Curiously  enough,  this  learned  Anselm 
believed  that  he  possessed  the  ability  to  unravel  it,  with  which 
those  coming  after  him  might  not  be  endowed.  Emphati- 
cally, the  latter  part  of  his  surmise  was  realized.  For, 
though  the  poor  soul  was  torn  to  tatters  by  the  dialecticians 
and  the  tlieologians  of  the  scholastic  period,  no  ray  of  light 
was  evolved  as  to  its  true  nature.  However,  the  mind  was 
set  free  to  speculate  about  it,  and  to  this  day  the  brilliant 
and  futile  work  goes  on  through  all  branches  of  thought  and 
philosophy.  Indeed,  it  is  the  very  problem  of  the  soul  and 
the  mysteries  of  life  that  circle  around  it  that  keep  all  the 
currents  of  thought  astir  about  us,  and  it  is  impossible  to 
imagine  what  would  have  become  of  all  our  writers  if  the 
good  Anselm  had  given  it  away.  One  could  wish  that  he 
might  have  achieved  the  desired  work,  for  it  seems  probable 
that  we  shall  never  have  a  happy  world  to  live  in  till  we 
know  all  about  it. 

The  riddle  of  existence  is  the  thing  which  humanity  seems 
least  able  to  endure,  and  the  unsolved  mystery  of  that  "awful 
soul  that  dwells  in  clay"  impresses  itself  in  saddening  lines 
upon  everything  in  creation  that  our  eyes  rest  upon. 

And  thus  it  shall  ever  be,  so  long  as  we  know  not  life's 
secret."  Even  though  that  secret  might  be  "monstrous"  the 
knowledge  of  it  would  be  a  relief  from  the  pains  and  fears 

119 


i^ 


120  The  Riddle  of  Life 

of  ignorance.  To  walk  in  darkness  appears  to  be  the  hard- 
est lot  the  gods  have  visited  upon  men,  and  to  submit  himself 
to  the  limitations  of  his  finite  knowledge,  the  one  thing  which 
the  human  philosopher  seems  unable  to  compass. 

Like  the  souls  that  dwelt  "content  in  fire"  because  they 
saw  the  meaning  of  it,  the  burden  of  all  human  pain  would 
be  endurable,  if  but  the  mystery  of  it  could  be  unraveled. 
Is  it  strange  then  that  great  souls  and  minds  of  all  ages 
have  given  themselves  to  the  attempted  solution  of  it.'* 

In  truth,  it  might  not  be  if  any  or  all  of  their  efforts  could 
show  one  step  of  progress  in  that  direction.  But  with  the 
best  lights  of  all  time  declaring  to  us  again  and  again  that 
the  problem  is  absolutely  insoluble  by  any  eff^ort  of  human 
reason,  can  anything  be  madder  than  the  manner  in  which 
humanity  goes  on  repeating  the  vain  endeavor  to  make  it 
out  and  beating  its  head  against  a  stone  wall  to  no  purpose? 
It  may  be  that  no  intelligent  being  can  rest  content  at  the 
heart  of  a  mystery  without  some  eff^ort  to  unravel  it,  but 
how  long  should  it  take  the  intelligent  being  to  learn  that  a 
mystery  is  insoluble  and  the  path  of  peace  and  happiness 
lies  outside  the  wrestle  with  it? 

The  happiest  heart  that  ever  beat 

Was  in  some  quiet  breast 
That  found  the  common  daylight  sweet 

And  left  to  heaven  the  rest, 

says  the  poet,  and  that  is  much  the  state  of  the  case,  and 
any  one  who  goes  to  nature  and  the  bee  for  his  philosophy 
will  find  it  out. 

The  bee  shows  no  pangs  nor  misgivings  in  sporting  or 
toiling  out  his  brief  hour  amid  the  flowers  or  honey  cells 
and  turning  over  his  work  to  his  gay  successor,  and  if 
we  are  to  consider  his  ways  and  be  wise  why  should  we  not 


The  Riddle  of  Life  121 

accept  that  crowning  lesson  against  "the  pitiful  weighing  of 
fate"  and  the  sad  discussion  of  ills  which  some  of  our  own 
poets  have  found  in  it? 

When  the  bee  community  arrives  at  the  height  of  its 
riches  and  prosperity  it  promptly  abandons  its  wealth  and 
its  home  to  the  next  generation,  and  "this  act,"  we  are  told, 
"be  it  conscious  or  unconscious,  undoubtedly  passes  the  limit 
of  human  morality."  But  why?  Do  not  all  the  genera- 
tions of  men  toil  and  vanish  and  another  enter  into  their 
labors?  It  must  be  because  of  the  "heroic"  and  unquestion- 
ing spirit  with  which  the  bee  submits  itself  to  its  destiny. 

It  does  not,  as  Walt  Whitman  expresses  it,  "sweat  or 
whine  about  its  condition"  or  rend  the  skies  with  the  eternal 
repetitions  of  the  vain  question  why.  It  takes  the  Septem- 
ber sacrifice  of  its  "thrice  happy  home"  or  city  as  cheerily  as 
the  summer  rearing  of  it  amid  the  flowers  and  running 
waters.  Perchance  it  perceives  the  same  law  of  life  and  good 
running  through  both  of  them,  but,  at  any  rate,  it  loses  no 
joy  in  the  summer  sun  for  fear  of  the  September  wandering. 

And  this,  indeed,  is  the  worst  misfortune  of  the  persistent 
human  struggle  with  unfathomable  fate,  that  it  loses  the 
joy  of  the  sunshine  in  the  consuming  endeavor  to  penetrate 
the  shadows.  Nay,  even  to  get  at  the  heart  of  the  rose,  it 
will  heedlessly  scatter  its  fair  petals  to  the  breeze.  Like 
Carlyle's  small  brandishers  of  the  torch  of  science,  it  wastes 
its  time  studying  how  the  apple  got  in  the  dumpling,  while 
the  unquestioning  banqueter  eats  dumpling,  apple,  crust  and 
all,  and  finds  it  good — which,  indeed,  is  the  only  way  to  know 
anything  about  it.  Life,  says  Emerson,  is  a  succession  of 
riddles  or  lessons,  which  must  be  lived  to  be  understood. 
All  the  speculations  of  the  philosophers  are  vain  and  idle. 
The  only  key  to  the  riddle  is  the  key  of  experience,  and  each 
one  must  apply  it  to  the  successive  chambers  of  being  for 


122  The  Riddle  of  Life 

himself.  It  may  be  that  the  good  Anselm  has  solved  the 
problem  of  the  soul  by  this  time,  and  again  it  may  be  that 
he  is  still  at  work  on  it.  But,  at  any  rate,  it  is  eternally 
true, 

That  of  the  myriads  who 

Before  us  passed  the  door  of  darkness  through, 
Not  one  returns  to  tell  us  of  the  road. 
Which  to   discover  we  must  travel,   too. 


CONCERNING  SLANDER 

IT  is  one  of  the  most  curious  things  in  human  history 
that  people  who  can  not  get  at  the  real  motive  in  a  single 
act  of  their  fellow-beings  should  set  themselves  up  in  judg- 
ment upon  them,  even  in  the  most  secret  and  sacred  affairs 
of  their  lives  and  unquestionably  the  love  of  scandal,  the 
desire  to  btir  a  sensation,  lies  at  the  root  of  a  great  deal  of 
it.  If  sensationalism  and  slander  were  to  be  wiped  out  of 
all  decent  life  and  journalism,  the  result  would  be  almost 
incalculable  in  the  uplifting  of  society.  And  this  not  half 
so  much  through  any  redemption  wrought  for  the  victim  as 
for  the  perpetrator  of  the  sensational  story  or  gossip.  In- 
deed, it  is  to  this  latter  subject  of  the  evil  that  the  new 
psychology  directs  its  first  attention.  It  is  the  slanderer 
and  not  the  slandered  who  is  the  patient  for  its  treatment. 
Nor  is  it  true,  scientifically  speaking,  that  any  creature  at 
any  time  was  ever  "done  to  death  by  slanderous  tongues." 
It  was  some  lack  of  sustaining  strength  or  poise  in  his  own 
rectitude  that  let  in  the  "poisoned  darts."  "The  mind,  con- 
scious of  rectitude,  laughs  to  scorn  the  falsehood  of  report," 
said  Ovid,  and  it  was  a  very  wise  as  well  as  good  man  who 
said  when  told  of  a  vile  calumny  concerning  him,  "I  will 
act  so  that  nobody  will  believe  it." 

Nothing  really  is  more  absurd  than  for  an  innocent  man 
to  worry  over  any  slander.  It  is  the  poor  slanderer  who 
needs  to  worry  and  to  move  all  the  philanthropists  of  the 
earth  to  rush  after  and  help  him,  for  by  every  law  of  truth 
and  being  he  has  turned  the  currents  of  his  life  into  the 

123 


124  Concerning  Slander 

narrows  of  the  pit,  and  secured  for  himself  a  future,  a  karma, 
that  either  philosopher  or  theologian  must  shudder  to  look 
upon.  No  sinful  act  of  man  more  surely  than  this  breaks 
that  ladder  of  love  on  which  he  climbs  to  the  light  in  drawing 
his  brother  after  him.  It  is  significant  to  note  how  even  time 
itself  brings  the  sequence  of  his  deed  to  bear  in  its  very 
colors  upon  the  head  of  the  slanderer.  In  a  little  town  of 
the  West,  not  long  since,  a  very  epidemic  of  scandal  broke 
out  among  the  respected  citizens.  Reputations  withered  at 
a  breath  and  character  was  no  safeguard  against  the  back- 
yard gossip.  But  the  wave  passed,  and  the  assailed  parties 
managed  to  pull  through  alive.  Curiously  enough,  how- 
ever, in  the  homes  of  the  slanderers  developed  shortly  the 
very  evils  they  had  sought  to  fasten  upon  others,  and  mothers 
and  sisters  found  through  the  fierce  obloquy  cast  upon  their 
own  dear  ones,  how  fearfully  in  seeking  to  condemn  others 
they  had  condemned  themselves. 

It  is  not  always  that  retribution  follows  so  closely  on  the 
steps  of  wrong,  nor  can  any  one  yet  say  what  subtle  influ- 
ences in  the  mental  atmosphere  may  set  a  suggested  evil  to 
developing  itself  in  susceptible  quarters.  But  that  the  deed 
somehow  returns  upon  the  head  of  the  doer  is  an  inevitable 
law  of  life  and  a  dart  hurled  at  the  soul  and  character  of 
a  fellow  being  is  the  worst  arrow  of  destruction  that  one 
can  let  loose  to  cross  his  path  at  any  stage  of  the  way. 
Whether  it  is  aimed  in  malice  or  in  idle  gossip,  he  must 
meet  it  at  Phillipi  and  pay  the  full  price  of  it.  It  is  for 
him  therefore  and  not  the  innocent  victim,  whose  cause  is 
safe  with  heaven,  that  the  safeguards  of  restraint  and  fair 
speaking  should  be  set  up,  and  when  the  better  thought  and 
psychology  of  the  day  succeed  in  convincing  men  of  this 
cardinal  truth,  slanders  and  yellow  journalism  will  no  doubt 
die  a  natural  death. 


I 


Concerning  Slander  125 

0£  course,  it  may  be  said  that  to  tell  the  truth  about  a 
man  is  not  to  slander  him;  yet  when  one  considers  that  it 
is  little  more  than  the  dangerous  half  truth  that  can  be 
known  to  the  outside  party  it  is  safest,  perhaps,  to  let  un- 
pleasant trutlis  take  care  of  themselves  and  work  out  their 
own  dark  penalty  or  sequence  in  its  due  place,  as  they  always 
do.  Besides,  it  is  much,  as  one  of  the  great  ones  gone  has 
intimated  in  the  case,  "If  you  take  temptation  into  account 
who  is  to  say  that  he  is  better  than  his  neighbor?"  "I  have 
never  seen  a  greater  monster  or  miracle  in  the  world  than 
myself,"  -ays  Montaigne,  and  while  that  remains  true  of  a 
man  whose  moral  precepts  and  lofty  philosophy  have  gone 
into  every  comer  of  the  earth,  and  been  translated  into  all 
tongues,  would  it  not  be  well  for  common  mortals  to  con- 
sider what  monster  is  within  themselves? 

Really,  too,  if  the  spice  of  the  matter  is  the  thing  desired, 
nothing  in  any  outside  sinner  could  begin  to  equal  the  bub- 
bhng  of  the  witches'  cauldron  of  mischief  and  temptation  in 
man's  own  soul,  nor  give  a  hint  of  the  moral  crises  he  goes 
through  in  the  secret  places  of  his  life.  If  he  does  not  find 
it  well  therefore  to  make  a  sensation  out  of  his  own  coquetry 
with  the  devil,  why  should  he  call  his  neighbor  in  for  the 
Mepistophelian  drama?  The  very  fact  that  man  aims  so 
neatly  to  conceal  his  own  shortcomings  is  reason  enough  why 
he  should  be  slow  to  uncover  his  neighbor's.  Let  him  that 
is  without  sin  cast  the  first  stone  is,  of  course,  the  divine 
principle  that  probes  to  the  heart  of  the  whole  matter,  and 
it  leaves  little  margin  for  trading  upon  human  weaknesses, 
either  for  sensation  or  example.  To  resolve  man's  virtues 
into  something  worth  exploiting  is  really  the  principle  for 
true  journalism  and  ethics,  and  we  ought  to  be  far  enough 
along  in  the  moral  graces  to  find  some  attraction  in  good- 
ness without  an  army  of  stage  villains  to  set  it  off. 


WOES  OF  THE  MISUNDERSTOOD 

AFTER  all,  neither  wisdom  nor  destiny  amount  to  much 
unless  human  beings  can  manage  somehow  to  under- 
stand each  other.  Considering  the  poverty  of  our  means  of 
communication  with  each  other,  the  plain  Scripture  rule  of 
thinking  no  evil  is  the  only  one  to  save  us. 

Our  language  not  only  conceals  thought,  but  it  manages 
to  conceal  about  every  decent  principle  and  aspiration  that 
lurks  within  us.  It  tangles  up  the  best  of  friends  and  has 
parted  lovers  that  not  all  the  blast  of  time  or  adverse  fate 
could  sever.  Half  the  crimes  and  wars  of  the  Christian 
centuries  rage  about  the  words  and  teachings  of  the  Christ, 
and,  although  nineteen  centuries  of  scholars  have  been  trying 
to  make  out  what  they  mean,  nobody  is  sure  of  it  yet. 
Hamlet  is  a  mooning  maniac  to  one  sage  critic,  and  a  deep 
and  subtle  scholar  and  philosopher  to  another.  At  the  uni- 
versities one  professor  presents  Macbeth  as  an  essentially 
good,  brave  and  heroic  soldier,  ruined  by  his  thoroughly 
fiendish  wife,  and  another  as  a  poor  coward  in  both  deed  and 
purpose,  hung  like  a  millstone  around  the  neck  of  a  woman 
who  would  have  been  one  of  the  greatest  characters  in  his- 
tory without  him. 

Nearly  every  writer  who  puts  pen  to  paper  is  damned  for 
what  he  never  knew  he  was  saying,  and  keys,  commentators 
and  women's  clubs  give  themselves  to  reading  into  the  rem- 
nant of  the  saved  something  that  they  never  dreamed  of  say- 
ing. The  "June  baby"  who  cried  "such  a  much"  over  her 
apronful  of  flowers  or  kittens  is  about  as  neat  an  expositor 

126 


Woes  of  the  Misunderstood  127 

of  the  tangle  as  recent  examples  furnish.  And  yet  when 
people  open  their  mouths  and  speak  it  is  fair  to  believe  that 
they  mean  something,  and  unless  their  actions  belie  it,  some- 
thing decent.  There  really  ought  to  be  such  a  thing  as 
character  that  could  stand  despite  all  the  confusion  of 
tongues  that  could  be  brought  to  bear  upon  it. 

A  lover  and  man  of  the  quill,  gone  on  a  journey  recently, 
sent  his  love  a  letter  that  seemed  to  write  him  one  of  the 
"gay  deceivers,"  against  whom  all  her  Byronic  favorites 
had  warned  her.  Being  of  an  explosive  nature,  she  was 
about  to  create  an  earthquake  that  would  engulf  both  love 
and  the  lover,  when  she  bethought  herself  that  this  wandering 
Ulysses  had  been  rather  a  stanch  devotee  at  her  shrine  for 
some  eight  or  ten  years  and  it  was  curious  that  he  should 
undergo  so  tremendous  a  sea  change  in  the  space  of  a  few 
weeks.  Hence  she  gave  him  the  benefit  of  the  doubt  and  a 
chance  to  explain  himself.  And,  lo!  it  turned  out  that  he 
meant  just  the  opposite  of  what  he  said  and  was  overwhelmed 
at  the  misunderstanding.  Since  which  time  these  two  intel- 
lectual and  long  familiar  creatures  are  using  a  kind  of  letter 
writer's  manual  to  preserve  themselves.  Before  using,  how- 
ever, they  might  have  been  a  light  to  the  world  if  from  their 
neat  experience  they  could  have  taught  human  beings  to 
believe  in  each  other  in  spite  of  our  idiotic  tongue. 

Really,  "to  understand  is  to  forgive"  in  nearly  all  our 
blundering  offenses  against  each  other,  and  if  our  words  and 
theories  could  be  sifted  down  to  some  clear  and  accurate 
expression  of  what  we  verily  do  think  and  mean,  half  our 
disagreements  in  creed,  code  and  principle  would  disappear 
at  a  breath. 

Some  day,  perhaps,  there  will  arise,  as  Whitman  sus- 
pected, "the  true  son  of  God  singing  his  songs,"  speaking 
his  language,  and  then  they  who  are  not  already  lost  in  a 


128  Woes  of  the  Misunderstood 

babel  of  tongues  will  be  able  to  unveil  themselves  to  each 
other  without  fear  of  a  policeman,  a  heresy  trial  or  a  ban 
from  the  insapient.  But,  meantime,  it  remains  true,  as 
Macaulay  observed,  that  the  "flashes  of  silence"  are  the 
most  "delightful"  part  of  any  conversation,  and  certainly 
the  safest.  The  picture  of  Carlyle  dismissing  Tennyson 
after  an  afternoon  visit  with  the  eager  invitation,  "Come 
again,  Alfred,  we  have  had  such  a  fine  chat,"  when  neither 
of  them  had  uttered  a  syllable  during  the  entire  interview, 
is  one  of  the  most  refreshing,  as  well  as  significant  ones,  in 
all  literature.  That  it  requires  two  well-attuned  souls  to 
accomplish  it  is  no  reason  why  even  lesser  creatures  miglit 
not  taste  such  bliss,  for  who  knows  what  kindred  spirits  in 
any  circle  might  not  be  beating  in  unison  with  our  own  if 
we  could  keep  still  long  enough  to  find  it  out  ^ 

It  was  noted  recently  that  in  their  ideas  of  diplomacy  in 
conducting  a  campaign  the  man  said  "don't  talk"  and  the 
woman  "talk  ceaselessly."  The  end  in  view  is  the  measure 
of  the  wisdom  in  either  course,  for  if  it  is  to  befuddle  an 
adversary  what  better  can  one  do  than  to  pelt  him  with 
words,  words,  words,  and  the  discomfiture  to  which  poor 
tongue-tied  man  has  been  driven  by  such  a  policy  ought  to 
teach  him  the  value  of  it  in  the  ruder  warfare  of  life.  But 
when  it  comes  to  the  heights,  the  spirit  altitudes  and  com- 
munication, words  are  too  gross.  It  is  about  as  that  poet- 
seer  tells  us,  "When  the  finer  feelings  are  touched  one  can 
only  have  music  or  silence."  Writers  like  Maeterlinck  in 
all  the  grace  of  poetry  and  art  have  tried  to  put  us  in 
communication  with  life  and  relations  beyond  the  bounds  of 
sense,  elemental,  universal,  and  yet  through  the  necessity  of 
speaking  in  terms  of  sense  the  grossest  meanings  and  ideas 
have  been  attributed  to  them.  How  then,  shall  the  ungifted 
be  expected  to  save  themselves  in  their  dull  grapple  with 


Woes  of  the  Misunderstood  129 

the  indiscretions  of  speech?  It  is  a  tender  legend  which 
tells  us  that  the  tears  of  the  recording  angel  wash  out  all 
the  evil  or  the  unfortunate  words  of  the  good  man,  and  if 
some  kind  lord  of  life  would  teach  the  recording  angels  of 
earth  to  do  likewise  this  world  would  be  a  better  place  to 
live  in.  As  it  is,  the  very  goodness  of  the  saints  is  held  on 
the  tip  of  the  tongue  and  goes  down  with  a  misinterpreted 
phrase  or  symbol. 


OTHER  PEOPLE'S  ILLS 

A  PROMINENT  business  man  recently  sprained  his 
back  by  some  rash  stroke  in  athletics  and  came  home 
to  his  wife  more  or  less  disabled  for  life.  When  her  sympa- 
thy grew  tearful  he  assured  her  that  there  was  scarcely  a 
man  of  his  acquaintance  not  largely  the  worse  for  some  such 
physical  injury.  This  seemed  to  comfort  them  both,  and 
the  disaster  to  the  spinal  column  became  a  secondary  con- 
sideration. 

The  philosophy  is  as  old  as  humanity,  and  about  as  curi- 
ous. Why  it  should  comfort  a  man  with  a  broken  back  to 
know  that  another  man's  back  is  broken  it  is  not  easy  to 
say.  But  apparently  it  does,  though  heaven  is  not  the 
legitimate  outcome  of  such  a  philosophy.  Indeed,  Sweden- 
borg  seems  to  be  its  true  interpreter  when  he  tells  us  that 
the  good  Lord,  out  of  his  tender  mercy,  provided  "the  hells" 
where,  as  it  were,  people  of  broken  backs  and  lame  limbs  in 
morals  could  get  together  and  enjoy  what  Plutarch  calls 
the  comfort  of  society  in  shipwreck.  Meantime  to  educate 
us  up  to  it  is  the  part  of  much  of  the  instruction  offered 
from  the  very  nursery  in  the  line  of  comforting  reflections 
upon  the  sins  and  miseries  of  other  people. 

That  we  are  all  poor  sinners  is  a  relief  that  theology  itself 
off'ers  to  the  strain  of  that  deeper  cry,  be  merciful  to  me 
a  sinner,  though  nothing  in  all  the  history  of  ethics  can 
show  that  one  human  soul  has  been  helped  by  it.  Poets  and 
philosophers  of  course  of  all  ages  have  tried  to  make  suf- 
fering as  the  common  lot  the  bases  of  individual  endurance, 

130 


other  People's  Ills  131 

though  how  the  grandeur  of  that  endurance  was  borne  out  by 
it  none  of  them  could  declare  to  us.  Pliny  beneath  the  belch- 
ing fires  of  Vesuvius  tells  us  that  he  found  his  "miserable 
consolation"  in  the  belief  that  it  was  the  end  of  the  world 
and  all  mankind  was  perishing  with  him,  and  in  their  secret 
souls  all  these  great  ones  know  that  it  is  but  a  "miserable 
consolation"  which  can  come  to  any  creature  out  of  the 
sufferings  of  others.  That  it  is  closely  akin  to  pleasure  in 
those  suffering^  some  of  the  more  honest  of  them  would  seem 
to  have  made  out  in  their  reflections  upon  our  poor  mor- 
tality. "I  am  convinced,"  said  Burke,  "that  we  have  a 
degree  of  delight,  and  that  no  small  one,  in  the  real  mis- 
fortunes and  pains  of  others,"  and  that  odious  maxim-maker, 
Rochefoucauld,  even  goes  farther  and  declares  that  "in  the 
adversity  of  our  best  friends  we  always  find  something  which 
is  not  wholly  displeasing  to  us." 

What  more  could  all  Hades  ask  than  that  to  found  its 
hells  upon !  And  yet  it  is  not  an  unnatural  deduction  from 
the  accepted  principle  that  misery  loves  company  and  finds 
its  own  ground  of  endurance  in  it.  Indeed,  the  fear  that 
our  friends  through  too  much  prosperity  will  get  out  of  the 
reach  of  us  and  our  misfortunes  is  the  gentlest  explanation 
that  is  made  of  the  hideous  maxim,  and  the  desire  to  bind 
them  to  us  even  in  the  bond  of  common  woes  is  not  largely 
discountenanced  by  the  philosophers.  In  truth,  community 
in  suffering,  perhaps  in  despair  of  community  in  joy,  is  so 
largely  a  part  of  poor  mortals'  demand  upon  each  other 
that  scarcely  God  could  come  to  earth  without  declaring 
liimself  a  man  of  sorrows  and  acquainted  with  grief.  Pains, 
wrongs  and  all  manner  of  ills  are  borne  patiently  if  a  whole 
community  shares  them  together,  and  age,  decay,  death  and 
oblivion  are  to  be  held  tolerable,  because,  as  one  of  our  own 
poets  puts  it,  "All  that  breathe  shaU  share  the  destiny." 


132  Other  People's  Ills 

The  crowning  bitterness  of  life  everywhere  grows  out  of  its, 
inequalities,  and  half  the  fires  of  war,  anarchy  and  rebellion 
are  kindled  less  for  the  pain  men  suffer,  which  in  default  of 
contrast  they  do  not  so  much  consider,  as  for  fury  of  the 
fact  that  others  refuse  to  bear  it  with  them — push  out  of 
the  common  lot  to  what  they  deem  the  uncommon. 

Some  soul  in  fire  that  could  look  up  and  honestly  rejoice 
that  another  soul  was  lying  at  peace  in  Abraham's  bosom, 
and  scorn  the  consolation  that  one  creature  was  left  to  suf- 
fer with  him,  might  revolutionize  the  whole  scheme  of  purga- 
torial pains  in  earth  or  hades  and  show  the  angels  a  height 
of  greatness  that  they  are  not  competent  to  attain.  Of 
course,  teachers  and  mystics  of  different  ages  have  sighted 
this  glory  afar  off,  and  some  of  the  blessed  martyrs  made  a 
fair  grasp  for  it,  but  one  person  alone  really  descended  into 
hell  to  teach  men  the  universal  love  that  alone  could  com- 
pass it.  For  love  and  love  alone  is  the  Secrt  of  rising  above 
any  consolation  in  others'  afflictions  which  the  odiously  dis- 
cerning philosophers  find  in  us,  and  every  true  household  is  a 
proof  of  it.  Imagine  a  son  comforting  himself  over  a  frac- 
tured spine  because  his  father  or  brother  was  similarly 
afflicted!  Picture  a  fond  mother  finding  consolation  in  the 
decay  of  her  charms  through  beholding  that  a  beautiful 
daughter  was  fading  with  her.  Try  Rochef aucauld's  maxim 
on  friends  who  had  reached  the  Damon  and  Pythias  stage 
of  affection.  Everywhere  it  is  the  poverty  and  dearth  of 
love  which  that  consolation  of  a  common  lot  in  sorrow  builds 
upon,  and  one  touch  of  the  fire  of  a  true  affection  shivers  it 
at  a  breath. 

Let  universal  love  "lie  like  a  shaft  of  light  across  the  land" 
and  all  men's  good  be  each  man's  care,  and  there  will  be  small 
comfort  in  knowing  that  pains  and  bruises  are  spread  over 


I 


Other  People's  lUs  133 

the  whole  race.  Even  that  incentive  to  courage  which  is 
supposed  to  lodge  in  the  idea  that  if  others  have  suffered  and 
endured  you  can,  is  a  small  matter  beside  the  strength  of 
treading  the  wine  press  alone  and  rejoicing  that  others  know 
nothing  of  its  crimson  deeps.  Indeed,  the  truth  of  the  mat- 
ter is  that  it  is  one  of  our  greatest  misfortunes,  instead  of 
gains,  that  we  ajre  so  tangled  up  in  other  people's  lives  that 
we  can  scarcely  have  the  toothache  without  setting  a  whole 
family  in  commotion.  To  find  a  place  where  we  could  have 
it  out  with  ourselves  when  our  souls  faltered  or  our  limbs 
failed  would  be  much  better  than  calling  in  a  whole  army 
of  the  halt  and  maimed  to  suffer  with  us.  The  lad  in  the 
mourners'  seat  who  reproved  the  boy  behind  liim  for  crying 
when  it  was  "none  of  his  funeral"  had  a  measure  of  the  right 
spirit  in  him  after  all.  Sympathy  may  be  well  enough  for 
the  sympathizer,  but  strength  to  abide  without  it  is  better 
for  the  sufferer. 

Most  of  all  the  form  of  consolation  which  looks  upon  the 
ten  thousand  woes  and  evils  that  men  bring  upon  themselves 
as  but  a  part  of  the  common  lot,  as  it  were  appointed  of 
heaven,  is  the  thing  that  blights.  Heaven  never  asks  any 
man  to  fracture  his  anatomy  at  either  work  or  play,  and  if 
he  does,  it  is  small  business  to  charge  it  to  the  general  order 
and  so  pervert  the  kindlier  ends  of  being.  Pain  is,  as  all 
the  teachers  tell  us,  the  child  of  wrong  doing  somewhere, 
and  to  dispose  of  it  as  far  as  possible  by  right  doing  is 
certainly  better  than  to  declare  it  universal  and  take  con- 
solation in  the  worst  form  of  it.  Really  joy  is  the  only 
thing  that  men  can  afford  to  dwell  upon  as  common,  and  it 
is  significant  that  it  was  when  the  woman  in  the  Bible  had 
found,  not  lost,  her  piece  of  silver  that  she  is  made  to  call  in 
the  friends  and  neighbors  to  sympathize  with  her.     It  is  due 


134  Other  People's  Ills 

to  our  misconception  of  life  and  its  true  bonds  that  sym- 
pathy and  the  "common  lot"  mean  ever  something  dolorous, 
and  that  people  scarcely  think  of  them  save  in  connection 
with  some  misfortune  or  damage  to  the  original. 


I 


TELLING  THE  TRUTH 

THE  story  of  Jeanic  Deans  will  have  to  be  rewritten. 
The  twentieth  century  has  no  use  for  the  one-ideaed 
puritan  maiden  who  would  swear  away  a  loved  one's  life 
rather  than  tell  an  inspirational  lie  to  save  it.  The  case 
has  been  tried  in  the  criminal  court  of  a  large  city,  and  not 
one  member  of  the  grand  jury  could  be  found  willing  to 
indict  the  trembling  sweatheart  who  swore  to  a  false  alibi 
to  save  the  man  she  loved  from  the  penitentiary.  However, 
the  ends  of  justice  are  satisfied.  The  man  has  gone  to  the 
penitentiary,  and,  as  the  lie  did  not  save  him,  there  is  no 
danger  that  a  series  of  lover's  perjuries  will  undermine  the 
majesty  of  the  law.  The  main  thing  needed  in  the  case  is 
a  Walter  Scott  or  a  Tolstoi  to  put  it  in  a  romance,  for  if 
there  is  not  a  spiritual  "resurrection"  effected  in  that  poor 
convict's  soul  through  the  power  of  that  maiden's  love,  lie 
and  all,  then  the  angels  are  behind  the  jurymen  in  making 
the  most  of  "the  greatest  thing  on  earth."  When  he  saw 
his  sweetheart  sink  back  pale  and  trembling  before  the 
counter-testimony  that  threatened  to  expose  her,  he  leaped  to 
his  feet,  runs  the  record,  and  shouted  aloud  that  he  was 
guilty.  Thus  giving  himself  up,  argued  the  jurymen,  he 
met  the  demands  of  justice  and  removed  any  necessity  for 
considering  the  poor  girl's  testimony.  Hence  their  return 
was  "no  bill"  when  the  effort  came  to  indict  her. 

This  closed  the  last  act  in  the  city  court-room,  but  in  the 
higher  courts  of  the  spirit  it  looks  very  much  as  though  some 
new  act  had  just  begun.     A  Hugo  or  a  Tolstoi  would  cer- 

135 


136  Tellmg  the  Truth 

tainly  produce  a  new  soul  in  the  hero's  case  from  such  a 
life  germ,  though  it  were  trailed  through  a  hundred  prisons 
in  the  operation,  and  probably  the  Great  Master  of  life 
and  souls  is  not  behind  them.  But  just  what  life  or  litera- 
ture would  do  with  the  heroine's  case  is  really  another  mat- 
ter, and  it  lies  too  deep  for  any  surface  treatment  to  dispose 
of.  It  is  certain  that  Walter  Scott  kept  some  eternal  truths 
of  life  and  its  sequences  intact  when  he  refused  to  let  a  white- 
souled  heroine  introduce  the  black  thread  of  a  rank  perjury 
into  the  web  of  her  life.  Nevertheless,  it  shadows  her  with 
something  almost  equally  as  dark  when  she  is  made  to  stand 
up  and  swear  away,  so  far  as  her  power  goes,  the  life  of  a 
loved  one,  to  keep  her  own  soul  inviolate,  and  human  love 
and  reason  refuse  to  believe  that  such  violence  done  to  nature 
and  the  tender  affections  can  ever  turn  out  a  means  of  grace. 
The  real  lesson  in  such  monstrous  spectacles  is  to  set  forth 
the  deplorableness  of  laws  and  civilizations  that  can  not  get 
beyond  them.  Society  is  said  to  be  a  tissue  of  falsehood 
from  beginning  to  end,  and  no  wonder  when,  from  the  school- 
boy to  the  court  witness,  human  beings  are  expected  to  turn 
state's  evidence  against  their  best  beloved  for  the  purpose  of 
having  them  put  under  the  rod  or  the  executioner's  ax  in 
some  clumsy  form  of  law  and  punishment. 

One  of  the  early  recollections  of  a  New  England  boarding 
school  life  shows  a  tender  maid  of  sixteen  incarcerated  for 
seven  long  days  in  a  dreary  chamber,  and  fed  like  a  jailbird 
on  bread  and  water,  allegorically  called  toast  and  tea,  be- 
cause she  refujsed  to  betray  a  favorite  schoolmate  whom  she 
had  accidentally  seen  skip  through  an  open  window  and  go 
off  with  the  "boy  tenor"  for  a  stroll  in  the  summer  moonlight. 
That  she  was  truthful  enough  to  confess  that  she  knew  the 
parties,  and  loyal  enough  to  insist  that  she  could  not  betray 
them,  was  the  head  and  front  of  her  offending.     And  this 


Telling  the  Truth  137 

is  much  the  condition  of  things  with  many  a  trembling 
witness  who  is  snapped  up  to  give  evidence  in  different  direc- 
tions against  friend  or  lover,  with  only  this  deadly  difference 
in  more  serious  cases,  that  refusal  to  speak  means  often 
most  fatal  indorsement  of  the  evidence  on  the  other  side. 
Since  home  discipMne  has  gone  into  the  hands  of  the  children 
instead  of  the  parents,  we  hear  less  of  brothers  and  sisters 
being  required  to  give  each  other  over  to  the  rod  or  torture 
chamber  by  witness  bearing  against  one  another.  But  for 
how  long  was  that  a  recognized  part  of  family  training  and 
policy?  Not  till  brilliant  humorists  like  IngersoU  began 
showing  parents  that  standing  over  puny  creatures  with  a 
club,  ready  to  annihilate  them  on  conviction,  was  not  the 
way  to  make  the  sensible  child  lay  bare  his  soul  before  them, 
or  tell  the  painful  truth  about  which  boy  hacked  the  cherry 
tree.  And  now  that  the  children  have  got  the  club,  and 
smash  the  furniture  or  hang  themselves  over  the  roof  if  a 
stern  look  crops  out  anywhere,  it  is  a  courageous  parent 
who  dares  say  that  his  soul's  his  own. 

Intimidation  works  to  the  repression  of  troublesome  facts 
in  either  child  or  adult,  and  when  it  is  brought  to  bear  upo: 
the  finer  feelings  it  is  not  so  strange  that  some  skillful  tac- 
tics in  "breaking  the  legs"  of  injurious  truth  should  be  re- 
sorted to.  "I  speak  truth,  not  so  much  as  I  would,  but  so 
much  as  I  dare,"  said  the  high-minded  Montaigne,  and  it  is 
a  nice  commentary  upon  the  state  of  life  and  society  that 
that  should  be  very  much  the  case  with  all  of  us.  To  tell 
the  truth  is  the  natural  impulse  of  the  soul.  It  is  the 
danger  and  calamity  that  attend  it  that  begin  to  train  the 
innocent-minded  child  to  phase  and  twist  it  till  often,  the 
more  intelligent  he  grows,  the  more  of  an  adept  he  becomes 
in  the  operation.  It  is  the  pleasant  sophistry  of  some  to 
imagine  that  they  can  save  themselves  from  too  much  com-* 


138  Telling  the  Truth 

pounding  with  the  father  of  lies  by  suppressing  the  truth, 
while  they  fail  to  utter  the  falsehood.  But  it  is  just  that  that 
society  has  set  itself  to  outwit  most  effectually.  Like  the 
poor  girl  on  the  witness  stand,  to  fail  to  testify  against  is 
to  admit  the  evidence  for  the  thing  that  undoes  us,  and  so 
a  protective  panoply  of  white  lies  becomes  almost  a  necessity 
in  guarding  our  most  sacred  possessions. 

Everywhere,  in  love,  in  law,  in  religion,  there  is  a  penalty 
attached  to  the  truth.  How  many  ministers  dare  speak  it 
to  any  people  as  their  inmost  souls  behold  it.?  How  many 
mismated  couples  dare  face  it  honestly  and  openly,  though 
all  their  lives  become  a  living  lie  in  consequence?  What 
cowards  in  love  everywhere  do  violence  to  the  very  life  prin- 
ciple of  their  souls,  because  the  truth  is  made  a  costly  thing 
for  them?  What  scores  of  Jeanie  Deans  are  hiding  the 
slips  of  recreant  loved  ones  because  society  knows  nothing 
better  than  to  crowd  them  into  pens  of  contamination,  bru- 
tality and  ignominy  if  the  slip  becomes  known?  Indeed, 
what  church,  court,  government  or  civilization,  the  world 
over,  has  brought  itself  to  the  sublime  height  of  dealing 
honestly  with  life  as  it  is,  or  making  it  possible  for  other 
than  children  and  fools,  as  the  old  adage  has  it,  to  tell  the 
truth  about  things  as  they  are  ?  The  little  English  lad  who 
defined  a  lie  as  "an  abomination  in  the  eyes  of  the  Lord,  but 
a  very  present  help  in  time  of  trouble"  sized  up  the  whole 
situation.  And  yet  truth  is  the  very  central  flame  that 
feeds  the  "white  radiance  of  eternity,"  and  to  clear  the 
path  to  it  the  most  essential  thing  for  any  creatures  who 
would  reach  the  eternal  hills.  To  put  a  premium  on  lies  and 
make  martyrs  or  monsters  of  those  who  would  speak  the 
truth  has  been  too  long  the  world's  system  of  education  in 
such  matters,  and  it  is  certainly  a  ground  of  congratulation 
if  any  jurymen  in  any  land  look  to  the  motive,  and  not  the 


Telling  the  Truth      ^  139 

deed,  that  imperfect  human  courts  themselves  impel.  Long 
ago  a  prophet,  dreaming,  whispered  of  a  day  when  mercy 
and  truth  should  meet  together.  It  is  for  that  we  wait. 
And  heaven  grant  that  it  may  dawn  before  the  exigenciei^ 
of  the  present  system  hurl  us  all  into  the  "lake  that  burn- 
eth"  through  our  futile  endeavors  to  connect  the  two. 


THE  TOUCH  OF  NATURE 

IT  is  a  divine  touch  in  literature  which  seeks  to  make  all 
life  kin  to  us.  To  knit  the  animal  world  to  our  own  in 
almost  human  loves  and  human  sympathies,  has  been  the 
work  of  our  most  engaging  writers,  and  in  stirring  the  pulse 
of  tenderness  and  respect  for  all  created  things,  especially 
in  the  heart  of  childhood,  the  work  has  been  a  splendid  one. 
But,  with  all  respect  for  the  gentle  and  gifted  ones  who 
have  so  happily  preserved  for  us  the  unities  of  life  in  all  the 
remotest  corners  of  the  kingdom,  it  is  still  a  regret  that  for 
any  cause  or  effect  they  should  have  been  moved  to  drop 
down  the  burden  of  human  pain,  as  well  as  human  pleasure, 
upon  the  free,  glad  spirit  of  the  lower  world.  It  was  bad 
enough  for  man  to  come  to  that  state  of  higher  conscious- 
ness which  would  fill  him  with  pain,  fear  and  mourning  over 
the  ordinary  processes  of  nature,  or  stir  his  bitterness  and 
revenge  over  the  natural  workings  of  that  great  law  of  the 
survival  of  the  fittest.  But  when  it  comes  to  tangling  br'er 
wolf  and  brother  bear  in  the  heavy  and  pathetic  toils  of  it, 
the  very  ends  of  nature  seem  turned  astray. 

The  one  great  answer  to  the  tremendous  problem  of  suf- 
fering in  the  animal  world,  and  all  the  preying  of  the 
stronger  upon  the  weaker  therein,  was  that  it  is  not  suffer- 
ing in  any  real  human  sense;  that  the  processes  of  life  and 
death  go  on  there  with  no  such  jars  and  wrenches  of  relations 
and  affections,  such  passions  of  grief,  despair  and  longing, 
as  mark  our  beautiful  "higher  intelligence."  Yet  here  are 
our  loveliest  writers  filling  our  dumb  relations  with  such  in- 

140 


I 


The  Touch  of  Nature  141 

tensifications  of  our  mental  throes  and  emotions  that,  really, 
the  beasts  at  Ephesus  become  of  as  pathetically  heroic  mold 
as  the  martyrs,  and  the  boy  who  lamented  that  one  poor 
lion  in  the  arena  "didn't  have  any  Christian  to  eat"  was 
entirely  in  the  line  of  the  new  relationship.  Meantime,  too, 
the  gladness  of  tile  world  becomes  seriously  eclipsed  by  it, 
and  the  taste  for  tragedy  is  receiving  a  new  impulse  in  un- 
wonted fields. 

A  little  lad  who  recently  took  one  of  Seton  Thompson's 
exquisite  books  to  his  Quaker  grandmother  to  read  to  him 
said  sturdily,  "Thee  knows,  grandmother,  that  the  stories 
are  all  very  sad";  and  then  the  little  tragedy  lover  sat  down 
to  let  his  heart  bleed  over  the  sorrows  and  wrongs  of  poor 
"Wabb"  and  his  heroic  journey  into  the  poisonous  valley 
of  death.  This,  no  doubt,  is  the  effective  side  of  the  wonder- 
ful animal  books  that  are  bringing  all  living,  creeping  or 
crawling  things  into  our  closer  sympathy,  acquaintance  and 
fellowship.  But  for  the  joy  of  that  companionship,  the 
gladsomeness  of  creatures  that  could  charm  us  away  from 
all  the  narrow  lines  of  human  society  and  relationship  into 
the  free,  wide  air  of  elemental  being,  this  flinging  of  the 
weight  of  "man's  mortality"  and  almost  accountability  upon 
beast  and  bird,  is  rather  a  dangerous  experiment.  And  if 
it  does  not  end  in  giving  us  br'er  wolves  and  grizzly  bears 
that  lie  awake  at  night  and  mourn  for  their  sins,  we  may  be 
very  thankful. 

The  truth  is,  too,  that,  with  all  the  playfulness,  fun  and 
even  hi'mor  that  have  been  read  into  the  lower  animals  by 
the  genial  Uncle  Remuses  and  other  authors  who  have 
claimed  them,  the  half  of  it  has  not  been  told.  Some  one 
recently  suggests  that  we  may  be  more  sport  to  the  playful 
kitten  than  it  can  possibly  be  to  us,  and  it  seems  very  prob- 
able that  all  the  kittenish  things  in  creation  have  their  own 


142  The  Touch  of  Nature 

fun  over  our  clumsy  efforts  to  dance  after  or  around  them — 
witness,  for  instance,  a  sportive  colt  leading  his  master  a 
coquettish  chase  over  field  or  meadow,  or  a  sly  squirrel  or 
rabbit  darting  from  your  path  when  he  has  tempted  you 
within  a  hand's  touch  of  him.  Did  you  ever  really  try  to 
put  salt  on  a  bird's  tail,  or  clap  your  hand  on  the  saucy 
minnow  that  flashed  toward  you  in  a  secluded  bathing  place  ? 
Imagine  the  mirth  of  the  tuneful  mosquito  when  Swift's 
"forked  straddling  animal,  with  bandy  legs,"  lunges  vainly 
at  him  from  his  distracted  couch,  or  the  amusement  of  the 
myriad-eyed  fly  when  the  portly  housewife  tries  to  creep  up 
behind  it  with  the  paper  whacker.  Consider  the  humor  of 
the  bee  when  he  sees  a  small  population  of  stately  bipeds 
performing  an  impromptu  clog  dance  before  his  tiny  sting, 
or  even  the  pleasure  of  the  butterfly  in  carrying  the  urchin, 
with  his  upturned  hat,  an  airy  chase  from  flower  to  flower. 

Man  is  said  to  be  the  only  animal  that  laughs,  but  what 
really  is  the  dog  about  when  he  twists  his  countenance  into 
such  ungodly  contortions  to  placate  you  when  you  try  to 
dislodge  him  from  some  favorite  corner?  Even  to  get  hilar- 
iously drunk  is  not  the  privilege  of  pleasure-loving  man 
alone,  for  does  not  the  sly  prairie  dog  go  out  and  "fill  up" 
on  the  juice  of  an  intoxicating  weed  and  come  home  "half 
seas  over"  in  the  morning?  Solely  for  this,  says  the  natural- 
ist, does  he  take  the  owl  to  house  with  him  and  guard  his 
entrance,  and  the  rattlesnake  to  make  sure  of  his  bed. 
What  must  be  his  contempt  for  the  man  who  will  "do  the 
deed  and  regret  it,"  or  spoil  the  insane  delight  of  it  with 
the  Keeley  cure?  Everything  in  all  creation  is  free  to  the 
animal  revelers,  and  they  are  the  true  "scientists"  who  live 
up  to  the  belief  that  nothing  in  their  maker's  world  can 
harm  them.  Shall  man,  then,  encumber  them  in  the  weight 
of  his  conscious  fears,  and  qualms,  and  stolen  knowledge  of 


The  Touch  of  Nature  143 

good  and  evil  ?  Shall  he  fill  the  happy  creatures  of  the  day 
and  hour,  the  glad  spirits  of  wood  and  sky,  with  his  canker- 
ing hates  and  bitter  memories,  his  long-cherished  revenges 
and  suicidal  abuses  of  "restful  death"?  Nay,  then,  let 
Shelley  tell  him — 

Wliat  objects  are  the  fountains 

Of  their  happy  strains. 
What  fields,  or  waves,  or  mountains, 

What  sliapes  of  sky  or  plain. 
What  love  of  their  own  kind,  what  ignorance  of  pain. 

It  is  enough  for  us  poor  mortals  to  worry  through  the 
golden  years,  cowards  of  conscience,  slaves  of  fear,  victims 
of  idle  tears  and  vain  regrets,  of  deadly  hates  and  passions. 
But  let  the  birds  and  beasts  be  free  to  roam  the  wide  crea- 
tion and  drink  the  intoxicating  draught  of  life  in  ignorance 
of  pain;  and  die  at  nature's  close,  aye,  even  fall  at  the 
hunter's  dart,  untouched  by  any  thought  of  wrong  or 
malevolence  in  all  the  universe.  The  sting  of  death  is  sin, 
we  are  told  by  the  good  book,  and  to  these  creatures,  inno- 
cent of  sin,  death,  even  at  each  other's  hands,  may  have  no 
real  terrors.  Certainly,  their  joyous  life  and  song  in  the 
constant  presence  of  it  would  lead  us  to  perceive,  as  the 
poet  tells  us,  that 

They  of  death  must  deem 
Things  more  true  and  deep 
Than  we  mortals  dream. 

It  is  to  share  their  song,  not  burden  them  with  our 
sighing,  that  the  companionship  of  such  free  creatures 
should  be  sought.  It  is  the  heaviness  of  our  souls,  "the 
weighing  of  fate  and  the  sad  discussion  of  sin,"  that  keeps 
us  out  of  our  best  inheritance  of  strength  or  talent. 


144  The  Touch  of  Nature 

Teach  me  half  the  gladness 

That  thy  brain  must  know, 
Such  harmonious  madness 

From  my  lips  would  flow, 
The  world  would  listen  then,  as  I  am  listening  now, 

cries  Shelley  to  his  skylark,  and  it  is  as  true  as  the  subtlest 
truth  of  art.  We  never  shall  achieve  our  highest  in  life  or 
labor  till  we  catch  the  "clear,  keen  joyance"  of  the  skylark's 
note. 


PRACTICAL  SIDE  OF  BROTHERLY  LOVE 

RELIGION  is  not  altruism,  we  are  told;  humanitarian- 
ism  can  not  save  the  sdul.  So  there  it  is.  Just  when 
we  had  begun  to  hope  that  brotherly  love  should  continue 
and  the  good  deed  done  unto  the  least  of  the  brethren  was 
done  unto  the  Master,  it  appears  that  the  whole  thing  is 
wrong.  It  is  settling  up  a  human  love  for  a  divine  love,  and 
leaving  the  debt  to  the  individual  soul  unpaid.  Worse  still, 
it  is  exalting  materialism  and  creature  comfort  above  that 
spirituality  and  triumph  over  the  flesh  which  are  supposed 
to  go  with  bare  feet  and  serge  garments.  And,  above  all, 
it  is  a  cant  and  a  hypocrisy  on  the  very  face  of  it,  for  no 
human  being  ever  did  or  could  love  his  brother  as  he  loved 
himself,  or  really  love  him  at  all  unless  he  developed  a  few 
qualities  on  his  own  account  worth  loving. 

Reduced  to  its  last  analysis,  therefore,  altruism  pure  and 
simple  is  nonexistent,  and  the  people  who  are  condemning  it 
are  passing  judgment  upon  something  which  they  have  never 
seen — a  feat  not  unknown  to  solons  of  all  ages.  "We  run 
about,"  says  one  writer,  "without  either  worship  or  pra3'er, 
declaring  noisily  that  we  want  to  see  everybody  happy,  and 
do  not  care  what  sacrifices  we  make  to  that  end.  But  we 
make  no  sacrifices,  fill  no  voids,  console  no  wounded  hearts 
and  do  nothing  to  knit  men  together  for  any  end  greater 
than  conviviality."  And  on  this  sham  image  of  human  love 
and  brotherhood  the  teachers  are  passing  judgment,  and 
declaring  the  long  dream  of  the  ages  and  the  life  principle  of 
all  religions,  from  Brahma  to  Jesus,  which  made  men  one  in 

145 


146  Practical  Side  of  Brotherly  Love 

the  divine  love  and  family,  each  ministering  to  the  other, 
a  failure  or  a  myth. 

"Sirs,  by  your  own  confession  you  have  never  seen  altru- 
ism. You  are  miles  and  miles  away  from  human  brother- 
hood. How  do  you  know  it  is  not  religion?  How  can  you 
say  that  if  properly  encouraged  to  show  its  head,  the  thing 
you  deprecate  might  not  only  prove  a  religion,  but,  like  Ben 
Adam's  name  in  the  angel  reckoning,  lead  all  the  rest."  To 
say  that  it  is  impossible  is  to  say  that  all  the  sacred  teachers 
of  the  earth  have  been  giving  themselves  for  an  idea,  that 
the  Master  himself  laid  down  his  life  for  a  delution,  and, 
in  "giving  men  an  example  that  they  should  do  as  he  had 
done,"  set  the  world  forever  on  a  false  trail  and  merely 
raised  a  mirage  in  life's  desert.  There  must  be  something 
in  this  idea  of  a  love  surpassing  the  love  of  self  that  comes 
in  to  exalt  humanity,  or  the  poets,  seers  and  philosophers, 
as  well  as  the  sacred  teachers  of  all  ages,  have  gone  astray, 
and,  before  the  new  wave  in  the  old  thought  is  quite  swept 
from  the  planet  one  would  really  like  to  know  what  it  is. 

To  make  it  easy  a  young  and  prominent  minister  recently 
assured  his  hearers  that  it  was  not  a  matter  of  loving  every 
brother  who  got  his  name  on  the  church  rolls.  You  don't 
do  that  and  you  can't,  and  it  is  not  demanded  of  you,  he 
added,  and  it  seemed  as  though  a  great  thrill  of  satisfaction 
and  relief  passed  through  the  large  audience.  And  then 
he  quoted  various  tender  passages  of  Scripture,  touching 
ungodly  men,  to  show,  very  much  as  tlie  "Goblin  boy"  has 
it,  that  "religious  cussing"  could  be  done  "according  to 
the  Bible."  In  short,  that  brotherly  love,  inside  or  outside 
of  the  church,  meant  little  more  than  following  the  instincts 
of  the  human  heart  in  the  direction  of  the  fair  and  pleasing 
everywhere.  Meantime  the  unpleasing  and  the  unblest,  who 
is  to  go  after  Judas,  Simon  Magus,  and  the  great  compan}^ 


Practical  Side  of  Brotherly  Love  147 

of  the  unlovely  and  the  foresworn  whom  Dante  so  conven- 
iently chains  up  in  the  lowest  pit  of  hell,  "according  to  the 
Scripture."  There  is  apparently  not  a  power  in  earth  or 
heaven  so  far  as  yet  made  known  to  man  to  make  brothers 
of  any  of  them.  More  significant  still  is  the  company  of 
the  Dr.  Fell  order,  at  the  other  end  of  the  pendulum.  Noth- 
ing in  all  tlie  creeds  or  brotherhoods  has  carried  man  beyond 
the  familiar  old  doggerel: 

"I  do  not  love  thee,  Doctor  Fell; 
The  reason  why  I  can  not  tell,"  etc. 

Only  the  blessed  little  intermediates,  the  cliildren  of  the 
slums  and  the  Ghetto,  have  walked  straight  into  our  hearts 
so  that  we  love  them,  even  to  the  extent  of  giving  them 
"ruffles  for  their  shirts,"  and  that  is  mainly  because  the 
authors  have  fitted  them  out  with  such  enticing  mental  frills 
in  introducing  them.  No  one  can  fairly  say  that  he  has 
grasped  this  brotherhood  problem  because  he  goes  slumming, 
or  takes  some  Maxime  Gorky  to  his  bosom.  All  this  empha- 
sizes the  minister's  idea  that  it  is  not  simply  being  on  the 
church  or  human  roll  that  insures  the  love  of  a  brother,  but 
presenting  the  qualities  and  attractions  meet  for  it — which 
certainly  other  than  bodies  of  divinity  could  make  out  for 
us  with  little  trouble.  The  altruism  which  sacrifices  self  for 
other  selves,  individual  or  collective,  can  not  legitimately 
therefore  be  put  forward  as  a  step  toward  universal  brother- 
hood in  any  sense  of  knitted  hearts  and  sympathies.  Some- 
thing wider  than  this  must  cover  a  field  which  contains  an- 
tagonisms and  difference  so  great  as  to  make  even  the  touch 
of  nature,  in  many  cases,  hard  to  find.  Really  to  allow  men 
the  right  to  their  differences,  the  rejection  of  the  alien  ties, 
and  yet  love  them  to  the  extent  of  having  mercy  on  them, 
might  come  nearer  to  the  help  needed,  and  perhaps  included 


148  Practical  Side  of  Brotherly  Love 

in  the  Master's  thought  when  he  said  "Go  ye  and  learn  what 
that  meaneth ;  I  will  have  mercy  and  not  sacirfice."  In  any 
case,  to  get  as  far  in  the  love  of  humanity  as  to  have  charity 
and  tolerance  for  brothers  and  non-brothers  alike  would  be 
an  immense  stride  in  the  direction  of  the  millennium.  It  is 
curious,  indeed,  to  hear  so  much  loud  talk  of  sacrifice  and 
self -giving  for  the  good  of  others,  when  just  a  decent  regard 
for  them,  a  simple  attitude  of  common  kindness  toward  them, 
would  be  all  required.     It  is  precisely  as  the  poet  sees  it : 

So  many  gods,  so  many  creeds. 
So  many  paths  that  wind  and  wind. 
While  just  the  art  of  being  kind 
Is  all  the  sad  world  needs. 

When  men  can  love  each  other  to  the  extent  of  being  kind 
even  to  "the  unthankful  and  to  the  evil"  they  will  have  a 
right  indeed  to  put  their  humanitarianism  on  a  footing 
with  religion,  and  it  would  be  like  denying  the  Master  to  rise 
up  and  say  that  the  church  would  have  none  of  it.  In  a 
brilliant  article  in  the  Nouville  Revue  on  the  "Secret  of 
Human  Happiness,"  M.  Novikoff  declares  that  the  object  of 
socialism — to  give  to  each  inhabitant  of  the  planet  an  ex- 
istence worthy  of  man — is  the  beginning  and  end  of  all  polit- 
ical wisdom,  while  its  means,  collectivism,  is  pure  madness. 
Thus  may  it  be  with  the  whole  brotherhood  idea.  An  ex- 
istence worthy  of  man  may  be  the  true  debt  man  owes  to 
man,  and,  that  paid,  brotherhoods  and  social  orders  could 
take  care  of  themselves.  To  count  nothing  human  as  for- 
eign to  you,  or  lacking  in  a  claim  to  your  fair  treatment  and 
respect,  is  an  old  teaching  in  human  brotherhood,  which  no 
new  science,  socialism  or  religion  has  been  able  to  supplant. 
Nor  can  any  authority  logically  declare  the  whole  system 
void  till  that  divine  idea  has  taken  root  in  human  society. 


Practical  Side  of  Brotherly  Love  149 

If  such  humanitarianisra  could  not  save  the  soul  it  could  at 
least  project  it  well  along  in  the  path  of  that  eternal  law 
and  justice  whose  "seat  is  the  bosom  of  God,"  whose  "voice 
the  harmonv  of  the  world." 


DREAMS  AND  VISIONS 

AT  last  the  impossible  heroes  of  fiction  are  explained  to 
us.  They  are  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of  and 
their  little  life  is  rounded  by  a  vision.  Altogether  the  dis- 
closure is  a  rash  one.  No  writer  short  of  Dante  can  afford 
to  tell  his  visions,  if  he  has  them,  and  he  had  to  pass  among 
mortals  as  "the  man  who  had  been  through  hell"  in  conse- 
quence. Generally  speaking,  it  is  much  out  of  hades  that 
the  visions  come,  for,  if  we  are  to  trust  the  authors,  it  is 
only  when  they  have  reached  the  last  pitch  of  desperation 
and  despair  that  the  visions  burst  upon  them.  That  is  why 
the  unregenerate  "line-o'type"  poets  are  trying  to  make  it 
a  matter  of  mince  pie.  That  is  why  the  craziest  thing  an 
author  can  do  is  to  tell  his  troubles  or  escapes  to  a  reporter. 
If  angels  or  devils  have  come  to  his  relief,  let  him  lock  the 
secret  in  his  own  breast  and  pretend  at  least  that  he  has 
evolved  the  brilliant  climax  or  troublesome  solution  from  his 
inner  consciousness.  Only  Prof.  James  and  a  few  others 
know  that  it  is  the  same  thing,  and  until  they  have  taught 
us  something  further  about  the  "lifting  of  that  threshold  of 
consciousness,"  which  lets  in  the  vision,  even  they  can  not 
have  much  to  say. 

The  curious  .thing  in  the  case,  however,  is  that  they  are 
more  tolerant  than  the  general  public  to  the  imperfect  vision 
and  will  go  about  patiently  investigating  visions  and  revela- 
tions of  uneducated  Websters,  and  travesties  of  life  and 
art,  which  that  same  public  rejects  with  a  sneer  and  a  jest. 
The  underlying  demand  of  the  public  is  that  anything  which 

150 


Dreams  and  Visions  151 

partakes  of  the  supersensuous  or  unknown  shall  have  some- 
thing superior  to  the  known  to  give  it  character.  And 
though  that  may  be  wholly  unscientific  to  the  investigator 
it  touches  a  fundamental  faith  of  humanity  which  is  after  all 
more  value  to  the  race  than  aught  that  science  has  yet  un- 
folded, and  that  is  a  belief  in  the  ideal  beauty,  truth  and 
perfection  which  sleep  in  the  unseen  and  which  any  true 
vision  of  it  must  reveal  to  man.  It  is  this  that  has  made  the 
jealous  exactions  upon  art  in  all  directions.  Standing  as  a 
seer  upon  the  mountain  tops  of  vision,  the  artist  is  expected 
to  disclose  to  man  something  beyond  the  dull  level  of  his 
common  life,  and  if  he  can  not  do  it  his  vision  is  discredited. 

Says  life  to  art,  I  love  thee  best, 
Not  when  I  find  in  thee 
My  very  face  and  form  expressed 
In  dull  fidelity. 

But  when  in  thee  my  yearning  eyes 
Behold  continually 
The  mystery  of  my  memories 
And  all  I  long  to  be. 

That  is  the  true  demand  upon  art  everywhere,  and  all 
the  waves  of  realism  that  have  been  brought  to  bear  upon  it 
can  not  obscure  it.  Indeed,  it  is  the  eternal  protest  of  the 
soul  that  the  ideal  is  the  real.  It  is  also  the  admission  of 
the  soul  that  it  is  walking  now  in  rather  a  vain  show,  con- 
sidering that  so  little  of  the  ideal  is  disclosed  about  it. 
Neither  is  it  any  use  to  look  for  the  ideal  along  the  ordinary 
lines  of  man's  investigation.  With  all  respect  to  the  gifted 
writer  who  found  the  climax  that  satisfied  her  etched  above 
the  head  of  a  Sunday  speaker,  the  ideals  of  truth  and  beauty 
are  not  always  found  in  halos  about  the  head  of  pious 
preachers  or  even  positivist  philosophers,  but  come  up  oft- 


15^  Dreams  and  Visions 

times  clearest  from  the  pit  where  some  delirious  Poe,  De 
Quincy  or  Villon  fights  back  the  murky  cohorts  of  the  night 
and  lets  the  startled  daylight  in. 

The  main  consolation  in  the  case  is  tlie  certainty  that 
the  glorious  ideal  is  always  existent  back  of  all  phenomena, 
and  waiting  ever  to  break  through  the  evil  of  the  so-called 
actual,  much  as  Carlyle  expresses  it  when  he  exclaims,  "Oh, 
thou  who  pinest  in  the  imprisonment  of  the  actual  and  criest 
to  the  gods  for  a  kingdom  wherein  to  rule  and  create,  know 
this  of  a  truth:  the  thing  (the  ideal)  thou  seekest  is  already 
with  thee,  could'st  thou  only  see."  The  prayer  of  Ajax 
for  the  light  is,  therefore,  the  main  one  that  the  wrestler  with 
either  life  or  art  has  need  of,  and  back  of  that  the  death- 
less faith  to  believe  that  the  children  of  the  light  are  there, 
though  his  vision  or  his  craft  should  never  reach  them. 
This  is,  of  course,  the  life  principle  of  all  achievements,  of 
all  endeavor,  and  it  is  not  strange  that  in  the  pursuit  of  it 
the  feverish  artist  should  hearken  at  every  door  of  the  oc- 
cult, the  mystic,  to  see  if  some  chink  through  the  darkness 
will  not  let  in  the  sound  or  glimpse  of  the  eternal.  It  is 
only  when  he  ceases  to  hearken  or  cries  back  to  the  waiting 
multitudes  that  the  ideal  is  a  dream  that  his  work  is  dead — 
nay,  more,  that  he  is  dead  also.  For  it  is  much  with  life  as 
the  poet  writes  of  friendship: 

I  am  not  shocked  by  failings  in  my  friend, 
For  human  life's  a  zigzag  to  the  end; 
But  when  he  to  a  lower  plane  descends 
Contented  there,  alas,  my  former  friend ! 

Contentment  on  the  lower  plane,  acceptance  of  the  im- 
perfect shadow  for  the  perfect  reality,  is  the  one  sin  for 
which  the  spirits  of  light  and  progress  know  no  redemption. 
Fortunately,  it  is  not  a  common  one  to  restless  humanity. 


I 


Dreams  and  Visions  153 

Though  countless  cliarniers  on  every  hand  offer  it  the  shadow 
for  the  substance,  and  all  the  pleasures  of  the  phantom 
show,  the  hunger  "pain  of  finite  hearts  that  yearn"  for  the 
infinite  real  is  preferred  before  them.  Art,  romance,  the 
poet's  dream  and  the  prophet's  vision,  all,  all  are  tried  and 
tested  by  this  inner  longing,  and  if  they  fall  short  of  the 
demands,  the  scoffs  and  jests  of  disappointed  spirits  ring 
round  them  and  the  dusts  of  time  receive  them.  Bad  dreams 
may  indeed  bring  bloody  hands  and  daggers  for  the  artists' 
use,  but  after  all  he  who  sees  to  the  end  of  dreams  alone  can 
fit  them  to  the  eternal  issues  and  leave  the  moral  order  of 
the  universe  uncaricatured  by  them. 

It  is  dangerous  for  an  author  to  put  much  trust  in  a 
vision  till  he  has  tried  the  vision  to  see  if  it  be  of  the  gods. 
That  these  gods  are  in  better  business  than  untangling  the 
knots  of  sensational  novels  is  the  thing  commonly  predicted 
of  them.  But,  after  all,  that  may  be  only  another  of  the 
pious  frauds  perpetrated  upon  us  by  those  who  claim  a  closer 
acquaintance  with  them  than  the  exhibition  of  it  warrants. 
That  no  one  can  quite  declare  where,  in  all  the  seetliing 
mass  of  mind  or  intellect  their  swift  lightning  may  strike, 
is  the  first  lesson  of  capricious  genius  and  mental  power. 
With  such  great  moral  teachers  as  Hugo,  Hawthorne,  Dick- 
ens, before  our  eyes  no  one  can  well  deny  it  to  the  novelist. 
All  that  we  can  fairly  ask  of  them  in  dealing  with  the  high- 
er powers  and  visions  is  that  they  shall  observe  something 
of  the  harmonies  of  the  old  Greek  dramatists  who  made  it  a 
rule  never  to  let  a  god  appear  unless  for  actions  worthy 
of  a  god. 


LAWS  AND  LAWMAKERS 

A  PROMINENT  club  woman  of  Chicago  once  found 
herself  in  an  embarrassing  situation.  With  a  view  to 
reforming  things  in  the  educational  affairs  of  the  city  she 
called  upon  the  president  of  the  board  of  education  to  say 
that  her  club  demanded  the  enactment  of  a  particular  rule. 
Being  induced  to  put  that  rule  in  writing  she  was  shown 
by  the  papers  of  the  board  that  the  identical  regulation 
required  had  not  only  been  in  existence,  but  in  actual  opera- 
tion, for  some  twelve  or  fourteen  years.  This  was  trying, 
of  course,  to  an  "estimable  and  intelligent"  leader  of  clubs 
and  reforms  and  it  is  to  be  feared  that  the  amused  president 
rather  pressed  his  advantage  when  he  requested  her  to  give 
the  matter  away  more  effectually  by  circulating  copies  of 
the  embarrassing  rule  among  the  members  of  her  club.  Yet 
this  she  might  have  accomplished  with  a  laugh,  although 
it  is  said  she  declined  the  opportunity  of  turning  the  neat 
joke  into  club  sport  and  left  the  triumphant  president  to 
serve  it  up  for  his  own  purposes  in  an  Eastern  paper.  How- 
ever, a  board  of  education  president  ought  not  to  be  too 
sarcastic  over  it,  for  it  is  not  a  dull  woman  that  could  draw 
up  on  a  moment's  notice  a  fundamental  rule  for  the  right 
management  of  schools,  and  that  she  was  disturbing  the  air 
with  demands  for  a  law  that  already  existed  is  no  more  than 
all  teachers,  preachers,  agitators,  reformers  and  lawmakers 
the  world  over  are  more  or  less  engaged  in. 

^There  is  not  a  legislator  who  ever  formulated  a  law  worth 
considering  that  he  was  not  simply  repeating  a  rule  of  life 

154 


Laws  and  Lawmakers  156 

already  in  existence.  Indeed,  the  beauty  of  life  is  tliat 
there  is  a  definite  rule  or  law  for  securing  to  us  every  joy 
or  good  our  souls  can  pine  for,  and  the  only  concern  we 
have  in  the  matter  is  not  to  cross  those  laws.  Yet  consider 
the  army  of  enterprising  Solons,  who  go  about  laying  down 
rules  for  everything  and  laws  to  regulate  the  universe,  while 
only  now  and  then  some  honest  Philistine  will  tell  us  frankly 
that  we  need  none  of  them,  and  that  "the  ideal  of  life  is  only 
man's  normal  life."*  It  is  a  law  of  being  that  we  should  be 
perfect,  that  we  should  be  fair,  that  we  should  be  happy, 
that  the  things  we  want  should  come  to  us,  the  friends  we 
seek  seek  us,  and  the  love  we  need  need  us.  Yet  from  all 
time  people  quite  outside  the  secrets  of  our  individual  lives 
and  needs  have  been  industriously  telling  us  "how  to  be 
happy,"  "how  to  be  good,"  "how  to  be  beautiful,"  "how  to 
be  beloved."  In  fact,  the  inmost  sanctities  of  our  souls  have 
been  resolved  into  codes  and  treaties  till  half  the  sweetness 
and  the  flavor  have  been  taken  out  of  them.  What  finer,  sub- 
tler thing  exists  in  life  than  a  perfect  human  friendship? 
Yet  consider  the  cold-blooded  analysis  and  rule-making  to 
which  it  has  been  subjected  by  different  writers  from  Plato 
down,  till  it  has  actually  come  to  pass  that  we  read  and 
find  approved  such  counsel  as  this:  "Friendship  is  to  be 
valued  for  what  there  is  in  it,  and  not  for  what  can  be  gotten 
out  of  it.  When  two  people  appreciate  each  other  because 
each  has  found  the  other  convenient  to  have  around,  they 
are  not  friends." 

What  is  a  woman's  naive  tampering  with  an  existent 
school  law  by  the  side  of  that.^  And  love!  that  more  than 
earthly  mystery  and  miracle  of  all  being!  What  has  been 
done  by  the  lawmakers  with  its  "free  primeval  spirit  of  holi- 
ness and  light."  To  such  tape  measure  rules  of  life  and 
liberty,  such  desecrating  ideas  of  right  and  wrong,  has  it 


156  Laxvs  and  Lawmakers 

been  subjected  that  it  lias  actually  become  necessary  for  its 
best  friends  to  put  forth  "credos"  to  declare  that  in  all  its 
manifestations  and  promptings  it  is  an  "emanation  of  the 
divine."  Goodness  itself  has  been  made  such  an  outer  shell 
of  creeds  and  systems  that  many  an  energetic  soul  has  a  mad 
desire  to  steep  itself  in  wickedness  if  only  to  get  at  the  kernel 
of  life  in  some  way.  "There  are  many  vices  which  do  not 
deprive  us  of  our  friends ;  there  are  many  virtues  which  pre- 
vent our  having  any,"  said  the  great  Talleyrand,  and  no 
man  knew  better  than  he  the  mistaking  codes  of  life  that 
made  it  so.  Nevertheless,  those  codes  were  all  aiming  at 
the  same  thing — to  hit  upon  the  right  law  in  the  case,  though 
to  do  that  was  but  to  repeat  the  club  woman's  exploit  of 
clamoring  for  a  law  that  already  existed. 

In  its  last  analysis,  therefore,  the  whole  thing  resolves 
itself  to  about  the  position  which  John  Jay  Chapman  adopts 
when  he  advises  rulemakers  and  reformers  that  "idealism  is 
the  shortest  road  to  their  goal."  It  is  in  treating  man  as  a 
selfish  animal  when  he  is  normally  unselfish  that  the  mistakes 
in  government  and  philanthropy  or  reform  have  been  made, 
he  tells  us,  and  in  this  light  it  is  difficult  to  see  just  where 
the  whole  cumbersome  machinery  of  law  and  government 
comes  in  any  way.  For,  if  to  legislate  for  man  as  a  sinner 
is  a  mistake,  and  to  legislate  for  him  as  a  saint  is  unneces- 
sary, the  only  legitimate  end  of  human  institutions  would 
seem  to  be  to  enlighten  and  not  govern,  to  lift  up  and  not 
bind  down — in  short,  to  show  man  who  and  what  he  is  and 
what  are  his  true  relations  to  those  eternal  laws  of  life  which 
are  written  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  and  let  him  control 
and  reform  himself. 

"In  his  will  is  our  peace,"  was  the  one  note  of  law  the  great 
lifeseer,  Dante,  bore  to  the  very  souls  in  hell,  and  out  of 
that  fundamental  truth  in  the  moral  order  of  the  universe 


I 


Laws  and  Lawmakers  157 


he  left  them  to  climb  to  paradise.  It  is  to  know  heaven's 
law,  not  multiply  earths'  laws,  that  humanity  most  needs, 
and  one  of  the  greatest  strides  that  the  race  ever  made  was 
in  recognizing  that  that  law  was  everywhere,  in  the  natural 
and  the  spiritual  world,  and  everywhere  for  joy,  and  beauty, 
and  good.  When  it  came  to  pass  that  man  could  truly  say 
with  the  poet,  "I  spoke  as  I  saw,  I  report  as  a  man  may  of 
God's  work,  yet  all's  law,  all's  love,"  his  redemption  drew 
nigh.  Simply  to  put  himself  in  the  path  of  it  was  all  re- 
quired of  him.  "It  is  just  a  matter  of  mental  attitude," 
say  the  wise  psychologists,  and  whether  Christian  faith  or 
psychic  science  help  you  to  the  right  attitude,  the  blind  laws 
of  men  become  oft  times  worse  than  superfluous  in  the  light 
of  it.  It  was  Solon  himself  who  said  that  they  were  like 
cobwebs  where  the  weak  or  trifling  were  caught,  but  tlie  great 
broke  through  and  were  ofl*.  Yet  more  and  more  as  the 
great  break  through  the  flimsy  nets  of  man's  laws,  they 
show  us  the  shining  bars  of  the  eternal  laws  of  life  and  love 
holding,  guiding,  protecting  us  in  every  path  of  beauty  and 
holiness,  until,  as  the  gentle  Whittier  puts  it,  "All  things 
sweet  and  good  seem  our  natural  habitude." 


THE  BOY  AND  THE  MAN 

IN  all  the  anomalies  of  nature  there  is  little  more  astonish- 
ing than  the  contrast  between  the  boy  and  the  man.  Any 
one  who  can  may  believe  that  the  child  is  father  to  the  man, 
but  until  life  shows  a  few  more  cherubic  pilgrims  along  her 
grown-up  highways,  it  is  a  proposition  that  child  lovers 
will  question  the  world  over.  Something  comes  into  the 
cold  and  calculating  spirit  of  the  man  that  you  will  search 
for  in  vain  in  any  child  that  was  ever  born  into  the  world. 
Something  inheres  in  the  glad  and  trusting  spirit  of  the 
poorest  child  that  is  lost  totally  in  the  grown-up  man. 
What  becomes  of  it,  poets  and  philosophers  have  tried  to 
tell  us  at  different  times,  and  in  different  forms  and  fashions, 
but  it  all  amounts  to  little  more  than  this — that 

At  length  the  man  perceives  it  die  away, 
And  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day. 

To  the  nurse  or  mother,  however,  the  transformation  in 
the  growing  boy  is  far  less  gradual.  Whether  the  cherubic 
age  of  his  enchantment  depends  upon  angels  or  petticoats, 
he  commonly  abandons  it  with  the  latter,  and  springs  full- 
armed  into  that  bumptious  and  destructive  creature,  known 
to  past  ages  as  the  "enfant  terrible"  and  to  the  present  one 
as  the  heir  presumptive  to  brilliant  and  unmeasured  genius. 
Nevertheless,  he  gives  no  hint  of  machivelian  deeps  in  his 
translucent  nature  and  does  all  his  deviltry  so  joyfully  to 
be  seen  of  men,  that  no  one  can  connect  the  directly  opposite 
type  of  grown-up  scribe  or  pharisee  with  the  small  boy's 

158 


The  Boy  and  the  Man  159 

fathering.  ''Delight  and  liberty"  are,  indeed,  his  "simple 
creed"  of  life  and  conduct,  and  to  keep  them  free  from  the 
Hind  interdicts  of  grown-ups,  a  mere  question  of  logic  or 
ingenuity.  "Mamma  said  we  must  not  play  in  the  park  to- 
day," said  nurse  to  5-year-old  Johnny,  as  he  pulled  her  to- 
ward the  gate  where  the  crowds  were  gathering.  "But 
mamma  won't  know  it,"  said  the  young  reasoner.  "But 
what  if  she  asks  us  if  we  went  there  when  we  go  home?"  in- 
quired the  nurse.  "Us'U  say  no,"  replied  the  innocent 
without  a  thought  of  harm. 

Sin  as  sin  is  totally  unknown  to  the  small  boy,  and  now 
that  psychology  has  found  that  all  the  mischief  and  diablerie 
he  has  been  held  accountable  for  is  not  inbred  sin,  but  vital 
energy  fermenting  within  him,  it  is  a  matter  of  no  slight 
interest  to  know  when  and  how  he  strikes  that  awful  line 
which  turns  the  good  to  evil  and  leaves  him  to  "mix  identi- 
ties" with  the  grown-up  man  and  sinner.  Out  of  such  an  in- 
nocent beginning  to  come  to  such  a  sad  and  sullied  end  is 
something  that  no  theories  or  philosophies  of  the  human 
soul  have  begun  to  account  for  or  even  recognize  at  its  full 
meaning.  The  best  man  that  ever  lived  stands  confounded 
before  one  glimpse  of  his  innocent  boyhood  and  finds  it  hard 
to  identify  himself  with  the  radiant  youth,  who  touched 
hands  with  all  good  angels  and  genii,  and  saw  heaven  break- 
ing through  earth  in  every  rose  of  morning.  Could  any 
good  creator  have  designed  this  thing,  or  gentle  mother  na- 
ture have  put  up  such  a  retrogressive  horror  upon  her  chil- 
dren.'*    It  is  impossible  to  believe  it. 

Who  told  you  that  you  were  naked?  That  is  the  ques- 
tion that  rings  down  the  ages  at  the  gates  of  a  lost  Eden, 
and  as  each  child  in  his  development  repeats  the  story  of  the 
race  it  is  no  doubt  when  some  serpent  of  darkness  blights 
the  blue  sky  of  babyhood  with  some  knowledge  of  evil  that 


160  The  Boy  and  the  Man 

his  fall  begins.  Not  until  the  human  intellect  has  reached 
a  point  where  it  can  know  good  and  evil  along  the  eternal 
line  of  cause  and  effect,  act  and  sequence,  can  conviction  of 
sin  be  made  a  means  of  grace  to  it.  Before  that  it  would 
be  the  first  impulse  of  the  startled  creature  to  run  away 
and  hide  himself  from  any  God  who  seemed  responsible  for 
such  deadly  issues.  The  wisest  little  Eve  who  ever  grap- 
pled with  the  dark  question  was  that  niece  of  Phillips  Brooks, 
who,  when  told  that  she  had  been  naughty  and  must  ask  God 
to  forgive  her,  replied  cheerily,  "Oh,  I  told  him  all  about  it 
and  he  just  said,  *Don't  mention  it.  Miss  Brooks.'  "  The 
lilliputian  Adam,  however,  takes  it  more  heavily,  and  that, 
perhaps,  as  much  as  the  different  conditions  of  his  life,  is 
the  reason  why  he  is  caught  more  deeply  in  the  toils  and 
falls  away  more  swiftly  and  perceptibly  than  the  girl  child 
from  the  divine  innocence  of  his  first  years.  In  any  case  the 
change  is  woeful,  and  the  indications  are  that  the  man  him- 
self goes  mourning  it  to  the  end  of  his  days.  "Would  I  were 
a  boy  again"  is  the  cry  of  his  heart  at  every  burst  of  spring 
or  flurry  of  first  snow  in  the  December  heavens.  The  charm 
of  half  his  wooing  is  in  the  visions  of  the  boy  heaven,  with 
all  its  angels  that  it  calls  up,  and  if  he  does  not  build  the 
domestic  fireside  mainly  to  find  a  corner  where  he  can  play 
the  boy  again,  he  tries  the  ticklish  game  about  it  often 
enough.  The  scenes  of  his  boyhood  are  ever  the  ones  near- 
est his  heart,  and  the  close  of  life  finds  him  babbling  of  the 
green  fields  of  childhood  or  murmuring,  with  the  dying 
schoolmaster,  "It  is  growing  dark,  boys ;  we  must  go  home." 
Hood  sings 

I  remember,  I  remember 
The  fir  trees  dark  and  high. 
I  used  to  think  their  slender  tops 
Were  close  against  the  sky. 


The  Boy  and  the  Man  161 

It  was  a  childish  ignorance, 

But  now  'tis  httle  joy 

To  know  I'm  farther  off  from  heaven  ' 

Than  when  I  was  a  boy. 


j^P  All  literature  and  life  throb  with  the  pathos  of  this  cry, 
yet  few  pause  to  question  why  it  should  be  so,  or  what  it 
would  mean  if  man's  consciousness  of  heaven  and  nearness  to 
it  grew  with  his  growth  and  strengthened  with  his  strength, 
instead  of  falling  away  into  the  "obstinate  questioning" 
and  "blank  misgivings"  of  the  world-worn  creature  who 
trembles,  as  the  poet  tells  us,  before  the  high  instincts  of 
his  childliood  "like  a  guilty  thing  surprised."  Somehow  to 
reverse  his  steps  and  become  again  as  a  little  child  was  the 
only  redemption  which  the  Lord  himself  discerned  for  the 
wretched  wanderers  who  had  strayed  so  far  away  from  those 
glad  groves  of  childhood  whose  palm  tree  tops  **were  close 
against  the  sky."  Yet  how  shall  a  man  be  born  again  when 
he  is  old  was  the  legitimate  question  that  waited  upon  it, 
and  not  all  the  subtlest  logic  of  the  Christian  faith  and  mys- 
teries could  answer  it  in  a  manner  exactly  creditable  to  the 
crooked  wanderer.  To  worry  "through  the  toil  and  moil  of 
many  3'ears"  just  for  the  brilliant  "chance  of  getting  back 
to  where  and  what  he  was"  is  not  all  that  was  to  be  expected 
of  a  progressive  being,  or  a  progressive  order  of  being,  and 
this  squeezing  of  a  frightened  penitent  into  heaven  at  the 
last  gasp,  when  all  his  life  has  been  a  chase  in  the  other  di- 
rection, is  not  a  thing  to  do  humanity  proud,  any  way  you 
look  at  it. 

That  the  end  of  man's  mortal  life  should  be  fairer,  purer, 
diviner  than  any  dream  of  its  beginning  is  what  the  law  of 
life  demands,  and  what  the  Giver  of  Life  must  have  intended 
when  he  made  man.  What  thwarted  the  plan  or  stepped  in 
at  the  quickening  point  of  a  soul  to  turn  the  evolutionary 


162  The  Boy  and  the  Man 

course  of  being  into  confusion  is,  of  course,  the  question  that 
has  torn  philosophers  and  theologians  since  time  began. 
But  that  such  earth  blight  need  not  be,  one  little  babe  of 
Bethlehem,  wearing  human  flesh  and  walking  in  growing 
grace  and  beauty,  all  human  ways,  has  testified  to  all  time. 
And  the  sweetest  thing  at  the  heart  of  all  that  testimony 
was  the  ceaseless  insistence  that  he  came  from  the  Father 
and  knew  all  men  as  his  brethren.  Convince  man  of  his 
heredity  from  God,  or,  as  the  old  Brahmin  has  it,  "tell  him 
who  and  what  he  is,"  and  heaven  will  lie  about  him  in  age 
as  in  infancy,  nor  can  all  "the  years  that  bring  the  inev- 
itable yoke  make  him 

Forget  the  glories  he  hath  known 

And  that  imperial  palace  whence  he  came.  '' 


CONCERNING  FOOLS 

THE  dangers  of  a  little  knowledge  are  beginning  to  en- 
gage the  attention  of  writers  and  educators  the  world 
over.  After  a  long  swing  of  the  pendulum  in  the  direction 
of  cramming,  pruning,  pounding  into  pedagogic  holes  and 
casts,  the  reaction  has  begun,  and  we  are  told  that  we  are 
all  "boors  of  culture,"  victims  of  mob  violence  in  educa- 
tion, rows  of  misfits  in  the  garments  of  knowledge,  and,  in 
short,  as  the  oldest  authority  on  the  subject  has  it,  "in 
professing  ourselves  to  be  wise  we  have  become  fools."  Any 
one  might  have  seen  that  it  would  end  in  this  when,  indeed, 
nature  made  us  fools  in  the  beginning,  and  science  has  been 
systematically  protesting  to  us  that  in  all  that  is  worth 
knowing  we  must  remain  fools  to  the  end.  To  set  up,  there- 
fore, that  we  know  anything,  is  to  fly  in  the  face  of  all  the 
brilliant  mystery  and  tangle  of  things  to  which  we  have  been 
born.  The  only  thing  that  we  can  legitimately  claim  of 
life  or  society  is  the  right  to  be  fools  after  our  own  hearts. 
It  is  mainly  a  question  of  choice  in  the  kingdom  of  fools, 
and  it  is  not  clear  why  one  fool  has  not  about  as  good  a  right, 
to  protection  as  another.  According  to  all  teachers, 
preachers,  schools  or  sects,  the  people  on  the  other  side  are 
always  a  set  of  fools  or  scoundrels,  and  every  man  who  has 
a  difference  with  another  man  sets  him  down  as  a  hope- 
less idiot  if  he  can  not  bring  him  over  to  his  own  view. 

It  is  impossible  to  determine  how  many  "kinds  of  an 
ignoramus"  the  human  being  everywhere  becomes  when  any 
question  of  the  other  sex  is  uppermost.     From  the  begin- 

163 


164  Concerning  Fools 

ning  men  and  women  have  been  largely  fools  and  enigmas  to 
each  other,  and  the  safest  thing  that  either  of  them  can 
ask  under  the  circumstances  is  the  right  to  remain  so.  There 
is  no  possible  indication  that  the  modern  effort  to  tear 
away  the  veil  and  find  something  more  comprehensible  and 
well  ordered  behind  it  is  of  any  advantage  to  either  party. 
"A  fool  there  was,  and  he  made  his  prayer,"  is  rather  the 
keynote  to  the  situation  still,  especially  where  any  tender 
romance  is  considered  among  creatures  who  really  prefer 
to  believe  each  other  everything  under  the  shining  heavens 
but  just  what  they  are.  That  Charlotte,  "like  a  well-con- 
ducted person,  goes  on  spreading  bread  and  butter,"  is  the 
last  thing  that  her  lover  wants  to  hear  about  her  when  he 
is  borne  worsted  past  her  on  a  shutter.  That  she  should 
go  into  hysterics  like  any  common  little  idiot  would  please 
him  better.  And  Charlotte — does  she  want  to  know  that 
her  lover  is  putting  heart,  breath,  brain  and  every  fiber  of 
his  being  into  a  man's  chase  for  place  or  power,  instead  of 
being  ready  to  sacrifice  all  creation  for  one  smile  from  her, 
as  he  has  idiotically  sworn  that  he  could.''  "Thou  little 
thinkest  how  a  little  foolery  governs  the  world,"  said  one  of 
the  old  philosophers,  and  what  would  become  of  love's  world 
without  it  not  the  bravest  of  the  world's  philosophers  has 
undertaken  to  set  forth. 

If  half  we  tell  the  girls  were  true. 

If  half  we  swear  to  be  or  do. 

Were  aught  but  lying's  bright  illusion, 

This  world  would  be  in   strange  confusion, 

sang  the  honest  Byron,  and  yet  to-day  every  creature  in 
love  believes  things  that  would  turn  the  very  stars  out  of 
their  courses  if  they  were  true.  And  who  would  undertake 
to  end  it.^     It  would  be  the  very  madness  the  Bible  itself 


Concerning  Fools  165 

wariis  us  against  when  it  declares  that  "he  that  increaseth 
knowledge  increaseth  sorrow."  Yet  here  are  our  new  guides 
telling  us  to  prove  all  things,  and  stand  for  nothing  that  is 
not  based  on  facts  ground  out  of  our  own  experience. 

But,  of  course,  this  is  because  they  have  caught  the  mani- 
acs to  the  idea  of  "being  well  informed"  trying,  like  the 
New  York  belle  of  Boyesen's  acquaintance,  to  get  the  gist 
of  Spinoza's  philosophy  out  of  her  learned  partner  as  she 
swung  round  the  ballroom  floor  with  him,  or  the  club  woman 
"doing"  the  "Women  of  the  Renaissance"  for  a  next  fort- 
night's paper,  or  that  "half  educated  woman"  of  Prof. 
Munsterberg's  dinner  acquaintance,  settling  problems  of  life, 
death  and  the  soul's  essence  "between  two  spoonfuls  of  ice 
cream."  And  they  don't  like  it.  They  call  them  all  fools 
for  their  pains,  and  no  doubt  they  are;  but,  after  all,  what 
more  of  certified  knowledge  have  their  wise  critics  achieved 
by  longer  poring  into  the  heart  of  things?  And  why  is  the 
connection  of  wars  and  fashion  plates,  doorknobs  and  crops 
in  Europe,  learned  in  Herbert  Spencer  and  frivolous  in  the 
society  girl?  If  the  grade  scholar  opines  that  two  and 
two  may  make  five  he  is  put  on  the  dunce  block.  When  Ibsen 
asks,  "Who  will  guarantee  me  that  on  Jupiter  two  and  two 
do  not  make  five?"  the  world  cries  "Hear!  hear!"  The  wise 
man  knows  that  he  is  a  fool,  says  Shakespeare,  but  does  he 
when  he  flounts  all  other  fools  for  being  fools  after  their 
own  kind,  and  is  he  really  ready  to  respect  a  farmer  who 
does  not  know  "a  Hobbema  from  a  garden  tool,"  because  he 
does  know  a  wheatfield  from  early  rye,  or  to  trust  a  physi- 
cian who  asks  him  "if  Ambroise  Pare  was  the  Ambroise  that 
loved  Heloise  so  deeply,"  because  he  has  mastered  the  in- 
tricacies of  appendicitis? 

Not  until  the  scholars  themselves  are  ready  to  admit  that 
life  is  too  short  and  beclouded  to  make  it  other  than  a  choice 


166  Concemmg  Fools 

of  ignorance  more  than  knowledge  will  this  grasping  after 
surface  culture  to  hide  the  defects  of  all  ignorance  be  done 
away  with.  And,  meantime,  why  not  be  happy  in  our  ig- 
norance and  choose  the  line  of  ignorance  that  means  most 
bliss?  "Let's  be  frivolous  and  gay  and  superficial,"  says 
the  heroine  of  a  modern  novel,  and  no  doubt  she,  or  her 
creator,  had  learned  the  folly  of  trying  to  get  Spinoza's 
philosophy  in  a  nutshell.  If  Michael  O'Hennesy,  sitting  in 
his  brougham,  is  a  genuinely  happy  object,  as  Mr.  Lee  ad- 
mits, why  should  he  become  wretched  by  trying  to  run  an 
automobile  into  the  heart  of  science,  civilization  and  all  dark 
mysteries.  "All  I  ask  of  you,"  said  a  society  girl  to  a  gay 
Lothario  she  was  about  to  marry,  "is  that  if  you  do  any 
fool  things  after  the  wedding  curtain  drops  you  will  keep 
them  to  yourself."  And  village  story  saith  they  lived  like 
turtledoves  ever  after.  It  is  the  eternal  prying  into  knowl- 
edge inconvenient  to  us  that  makes  havoc  of  homes  and  all 
human  institutions  everywhere.  "The  unknown  God,  him 
declare  I  unto  you,"  said  the  wisest  of  the  apostles,  and  to 
see  eye  to  eye,  and  know  as  we  are  known,  is  a  consumma- 
tion wisely  reserved  for  a  better  world  than  this.  Where- 
fore the  fool's  prayer,  as  one  of  our  own  poets  has  written 
it,  touches  the  core  of  all  wisdom.  "God  be  merciful  to  me, 
a  fool,"  is  no  doubt  the  most  fitting  petition  that  our  stam- 
mering tongues  and  groping  minds  can  put  up.  But  the 
pity  of  it  is  that  no  one  short  of  a  God  has  any  ear  for 
such  a  prayer.  And  that  is  largely  what  is  the  matter  with 
our  poor  pretentious  and  pedantic  little  earth. 


TANGLES  OF  LIFE 

MORE  and  more  life  in  the  hands  of  our  teachers  is 
becoming  like  the  picture  puzzles.  "The  Arab  is  look- 
ing for  his  camel;  where  is  it?"  Scrawling  lines  and  barren 
plain,  and  never  a  gleam  of  anything  that  looks  more  like 
a  camel  than  a  sage  bush;  yet  all  the  brilliant  ones  take 
much  delight  in  drawing  the  humpbacked  creature  out  of 
his  retirement  and  displaying  to  us  his  goodly  proportions. 
The  ambition  of  the  scientific  and  unscientific  alike  seems 
to  be  to  present  life  as  a  bewildering  puzzle  and  yet  show 
us  how  to  draw  the  object  of  our  desire  out  of  it.  Gra- 
ciously, too,  when  revealed,  they  show, us  that  it  was  a  part 
of  the  landscape,  and  expect  us  to  admire  the  skill  of  the 
artist  who  put  it  there.  Those  who  find  it  appear  to. 
Those  who  miss  it  challenge  the  sense  of  the  craftsman  at 
once,  and  for  any  other  purpose  than  hiding  a  camel  or 
some  other  ungainly  beast  in  a  wilderness  his  effort  is  a  poor 
one.  That  is  why  the  whole  game  seems  beneath  the  dignity 
of  the  Great  Artist  of  the  universe. 

Out  of  a  little  suburban  window  one  of  his  spring  pictures 
opens  this  moment  to  the  view.  A  woodland  park,  carpeted 
in  a  soft,  fresh  velvet  green  that  no  loom  of  the  Orient  can 
match ;  trees  just  showing  a  faint  glimmer  of  coming  leaf  or 
bud  against  the  airy  tracing  of  thin,  bare  boughs;  a  sky  of 
ethereal  blue  melting  in  a  kind  of  misty  tenderness  into  the 
calm  bosom  of  the  great  lake  that  sweeps  on  and  on,  in 
delicate  waves  of  purple  and  azure,  to  the  far  horizon. 
Where  is  the  camel.?     What  lumbering,  slow-footed  beast  of 

167 


168  Tangles  of  Life 

human  desire  has  any  occult  maniac  to  project  into  that 
scene?  And  can  any  rational  creature  believe  that  the  di- 
vine artist  meant  the  being  for  whom  he  painted  it  to  do 
aught  but  sit  down  in  rapt  content  and  drink  it  in  to  his 
souPs  refreshing? 

Last  night  a  round,  yellow  moon  hung  low  in  the  soft  sky, 
and  out  of  the  brooding  forest  the  cry  of  the  whip-poor-will 
rang  full  and  clear.  What  tortured  shape  of  desire  would 
you  paint  there?  Nothing  short  of  two  young  lovers  newly 
wed  would  fit  the  scene,  and  no  doubt  it  was  made  for  them 
and  all  other  happy  spirits  who  have  no  problems  to  hunt 
in  it. 

To  project  man's  dark  and  tangled  images  of  desire  into 
the  fair  and  open  face  of  nature  and  set  him  hunting  for 
them  there  is  to  pervert  the  finest  ministry  of  creation  to 
his  soul's  unrest.  This  searching  for  some  hidden  meaning 
everywhere,  some  puzzle  in  the  picture,  some  shape  that  shall 
spring  forth  to  satisfy  the  haunting  demon  of  desire,  is  the 
thing  that  steals  from  us  the  very  glory  of  the  universe, 
and  the  old  Brahmins  were  no  doubt  right  in  teaching  that 
only  in  the  death  of  desire  was  the  birth  of  any  true  life  or 
fullness  of  being  possible  to  man.  So  long  as  he  is  search- 
ing for  his  own  little  dromedary  or  caravan  to  wait  upon 
him  all  the  eternal  forces  of  creation  sweep  round  him  in 
vain. 

Even  Sylvia's  absence  should  not  take  the  music  out  of 
the  Nightingale.  Yet  it  does,  and  that  is  one  of  the  sorri- 
est features  of  the  case,  since  from  time  immemorial  all  na- 
ture and  life  have  been  trying  to  teach  man  that  she,  too, 
could  drop  out  of  the  landscape — nay,  only  by  some  rare 
chance  could  be  found  in  it.  The  most  capricious  wizard 
that  ever  tried  to  hide  steeds  in  a  wilderness  is  that  little 
God  of  love.     Yet  all  creation  turns  life  into  a  picture  puz- 


Tangles  of  Life  169 

zle  to  find  them  at  his  behest,  and  commonly  resolves  it  to 
a  desert,  or  something  worse  in  the  operation: 

To  be  with  Wilhelm,  that's  my  heaven ; 
Without  him — that's  my  hell. 

So  runs  the  delirious  lesson.  And  shortly  Wilhelm  takes 
to  the  woods,  or  that  mysterious  realm  of  "You  can  never 
know  why,"  and  there  you  are  in  hell,  just  where  you  ought 
to  be  for  trying  to  make  heaven  out  of  any  creature  but 
the  highest. 

That  is  the  secret  of  life's  picture  puzzle  if  you  want  to 
know  it;  and  of  every  leaf  and  flower  and  growing  thing 
that  freshens  and  blooms  in  the  springtime  and  fades  and 
blooms  again,  in  life's  eternal  round.  They  all  speak  of  a 
light  that  fails  not,  a  love  that  knows  no  satiety;  a  being 
that  floats  high  and  higher  toward  that  great  white  cen- 
ter of  Hfe,  unhampered  by  the  need  of  any  Ariadne  clews  of 
philosopher  or  mystic  to  show  it  the  way.  That  grand  old 
Hebrew  palmist  knew  it,  when  he  said  "The  heaven  declares 
the  glory  of  the  Lord  and  tlie  firmament  showeth  his  handi- 
work," and  there  is  nothing  obscure  in  that  matchless  pic- 
ture that  he  rolls  out.  That  poet,  "beautiful  as  an  angel," 
knew  it  when  he  sent  his  skylark  careening  through  the 
golden  light,  "like  an  unbodied  joy  whose  race  is  just  be- 
gun." 

There  are  no  tears  and  puzzles  in  "the  sweet  face  that  na- 
ture wears,"  save  as  man,  with  his  fears  and  groanings,  and 
selfish  individual  desires  and  ambitions,  puts  them  there,  for 
himself,  or  his  brother.  And,  oh !  the  pity  that  some  strong 
hand  can  not  wipe  them  out  and  give  us  the  rapture  of  the 
open  picture  before  it  is  folded  up  like  a  scroll  from  our 
failing  sight.  Once  to  gaze  upon  it,  without  that  haunting 
sense  of   some  hidden  want,   some  puzzling  problem  to  be 


170  Tangles  of  Life 

wrought  out  of  it,  might  reveal  to  us  the  end  of  all  wants 
in  its  harmonious  whole.  For  what  we  want  of  life  may 
be,  after  all,  of  less  moment  than  what  it  wants  of  us,  and 
if  we  could  fit  into  the  picture  perhaps  the  tangle  of  the 
whole  business  would  be  resolved  for  us. 

For  many  decades  the  very  gentlest  of  the  philosophers 
have  been  telling  us  that  what  God  has  made  his  creatures 
to  need  that  he  invariably  provides.  "I  do  not  believe  that 
God  ever  made  a  want  without  providing  for  its  supply," 
says  one  of  the  latest  of  them,  and  that  seems  the  only  true 
principle  for  any  fair  creator  to  go  upon.  Considering, 
then,  that  we  spend  the  better  part  of  our  days  chasing 
after  wants  that  are  never  supplied,  the  natural  conclusion 
is  that  we  are  on  the  track  of  wants  not  made  by  the  Cre- 
ator. And  this,  indeed,  it  may  be,  that  turns  the  fair  face 
of  things  into  mysteries  and  tangles,  when  the  bounties  of 
heaven  are  ever  open  as  the  day  and  common  to  every  crea- 
ture that  breathes.  To  draw  the  object  of  his  own  desire 
out  of  the  human  canvas  there  is  no  limit  to  the  liberty 
which  man  will  take  with  the  picture,  and  in  the  main  all  the 
psychic  teachers  of  the  day  are  abetting  him  in  it.  Mean- 
time, life  teaches  him,  as  one  great  preacher  has  it,  to 
"satisfy  his  wants  by  lopping  off  his  desires,"  and  not  till 
he  has  mastered  that  lesson  can  he  know,  indeed,  how  glori- 
ous is  the  provision  which  the  Creator  offers  for  every  want 
that  he  has  made. 


THE  VIRTUES  OF  THE  RELATION  OF  BROTHER 
AND  SISTER 

HOW  to  keep  young  is  an  endless  theme  for  all  writers. 
Volumes  could  be  given  to  the  guesses  that  have  been 
made  at  it.  Rules  and  recipes  are  a  drug  on  the  market. 
Yet  one  prime  secret  in  the  case  has  been  wholly  ignored. 
It  is  so  simple,  too,  that  children  of  one  family  ought  to 
have  guessed  it  long  ago.  Eschew  marriage  and  cling  to 
your  brothers  and  sisters.  That  is  all  there  is  of  it — un- 
less some  troublesome  reasoner  should  suggest  that  without 
marriage  there 'd  be  no  brothers  and  sisters,  and  then  it 
might  be  necessary  to  add,  if  tribulations  must  come,  at 
least  take  a  recess  from  them  and  hunt  the  playmates  of 
youth,  the  ones  who  always  stand  as  children  with  you  in 
the  records  of  time.  Brothers  are  always  young — sisters 
remain  "Sis"  to  the  end.  "We  children"  turns  the  scale 
backward  whenever  the  family  relation  comes  uppermost. 
The  philosophy  of  it  lies  partly  in  the  fact  that  no  more 
than  the  leopard  can  change  its  spots  can  the  kinks  and  char- 
acteristics of  the  child  that  made  sport  for  the  teasing 
brother  or  the  mischievous  sister  fail  to  declare  themselves 
when  the  old  touch  calls  the  hidden  springs  of  being  into 
play.  Three  children  of  one  house — Emily,  Sarah  and  Tom 
— recently  met  almost  by  chance  at  one  of  life's  way  sta- 
tions, when  the  spring  began  to  stir  spring  in  the  blood  for 
all  earth's  children.  The  family  trio  by  count  of  years  stood 
anywhere  between  50  and  60,  with  Tom  at  the  head  of  the 
record.     But,  what  with  rollicking  and  reminiscencing,  the 

171 


172    The  Virtues  of  the  Relation  of  Brother  and  Sister 

dignity  of  years  sat  so  lightly  upon  their  shoulders  that  the 
very  third  day  found  Tom  slipping  a  pollywog  into  Sarah's 
plump  hand  just  to  hear  her  scream  and  blowing  up  frogs 
through  hollow  straws  stuck  in  their  throats  to  make  Emily 
laugh  as  she  "used  to"  at  their  funny  attempts  to  dive  in- 
stead of  float  when  he  flung  them  back  into  the  water. 

Tom  and  Maggie  Tulliver,  in  the  sweetest  and  truest  life 
story  George  Eliot  ever  wrote,  tells  the  truth  of  a  relation 
that  is  the  purest  and  most  enduring  of  all  earthly  ties, 
and  the  one  above  any  other  that  "always  finds  us  young 
and  always  keeps  us  so."  Long  before  George  Eliot's  day, 
too,  the  masters  of  literature  gave  their  sublimest  efforts  to 
glorifying  a  brother  and  a  sister's  love.  Sophocles'  master- 
piece is  given  to  this  theme.  In  his  immortal  drama,  An- 
tigone, a  sister's  love  shines  like  a  star  above  every  love  of 
earth.  In  Dickens'  "Child's  Dream  of  a  Star"  it  is  the 
whisper,  "Has  my  brother  come  yet?"  that  points  his  fin- 
est conception  of  the  love  that  weathers  time  and  awaits  the 
soul  in  heaven.  "We  never  love  as  the  angels  do  till  love's 
first  passion  dies,"  said  an  old  English  poet ;  but  a  brother's 
love  begins  that  way  and  knits  itself  to  the  love  of  the  an- 
gels without  the  need  of  any  fires  of  time  to  burn  out  its 
dross.  Love  as  a  "brief  madness"  is  so  much  the  story  of 
a  lover's  love  that  human  aff^ection  would  show  a  strange 
face  if  the  ties  of  blood  were  stricken  out  of  it. 

"Forty  thousand  brothers  could  not,  with  all  their  quan- 
tity of  love,  make  up  my  sum,"  cries  mooning  Hamlet,  when 
fair  Ophelia  had  perished  in  the  very  atmosphere  of  his 
love.  But  it  is  the  brother  who  feels  the  eternal  bond  when 
he  whispers,  "A  ministering  angel  shall  my  sister  be."  That 
blood  is  thicker  than  water  the  writers  tell  us  is  not  only  one 
of  the  most  familiar,  but  one  of  the  very  oldest  proverbs  in 


The  Virtues  of  the  Relation  of  Brother  and  Sister    173 

existence,  and  the  sympathy  in  years  as  well  as  relation- 
ship makes  the  tie  of  blood  peculiarly  strong  in  brothers  and 
sisters.  Divine  as  the  love  may  be  between  parents  and 
children,  the  inequality  of  age  and  relationship  hurts  that 
perfect  sympathy  and  freedom  which  makes  love  and  inter- 
course complete.  Stevenson  gives  the  case  correctly,  when 
he  says,  that,  to  make  intercourse  perfect  there  must  be 
moral  equality  between  the  parties  and  to  make  love  com- 
plete a  mutual  understanding  which  is  love's  very  essence. 
"But  the  parent,"  he  writes,  "begins  with  an  imperfect  no- 
tion of  the  child's  character,  formed  in  early  years,  or  dur- 
ing the  equinoctial  gales  of  youth ;  to  this  he  adheres,  noting 
only  the  facts  which  suit  with  his  preconceptions ;  and  hence 
between  parent  and  child,  intercourse  is  apt  to  degenerate 
into  a  verbal  fencing  bout,  and  misapprehensions  to  become 
ingrained." 

While  love  continues  to  fly  out  of  the  window  when  bank 
failures  come  in  at  the  door,  a  brother  who  is  born  for  ad- 
versity can  discount  the  lover  or  titled  lord  any  day.  It 
is  a  significant  fact  that  the  only  friend  the  Scripture  rec- 
ognizes as  one  that  sticketh  closer  than  a  brother  is  the 
Divine  friend  whose  love  outvied  all  men's.  Of  all  the  re- 
lations known  to  man,  the  one  he  chose  to  bring  him  closest 
to  human  need  was  that  of  an  elder  brother.  If  marriage 
ever  does  become  what  it  ought  to  be  on  this  troubled  earth, 
it  will  be  considerable  of  the  elder  brother  and  kin  sister 
that  will  enter  into  it.  It  appears  that  even  those  fine 
creatures,  the  Maeterlinck's,  had  much  trouble  in  adjust- 
ing the  relationship  until  something  like  a  natural  harmony 
was  established  between  them.  Mme.  Maeterlinck  admits 
that  many  a  jar  marked  their  first  days  of  matrimony.  The 
artist  temperament  in  both  struck  high,  but  dissimilar  vibra- 


174    The  Virtues  of  the  Relation  of  Brother  and  Sister 

tions  in  each,  and,  until  many  breathing  exercises  (perhaps 
not  all  laid  down  by  science)  had  achieved  "perfect  polariza- 
tion of  the  nerves,"  much  trouble  ensued. 

It  may  be  for  some  adversities  of  this  nature  that  the 
brother  is  born,  and  at  any  rate  the  woman  who  has  learned 
to  keep  her  vibration  in  perfect  harmony  with  the  brother 
will  understand  far  better  than  the  brotherless  one  how  to 
polarize  her  nerves  in  her  husband's  case.  It  may  be  that 
men  have  lost  more  than  they  know  in  rejecting  so  scorn- 
fully and  hotly  their  undecided  sweetheart's  proposals  to 
love  them  as  brothers.  A  faithful  test  of  this  nature  might 
save  half  the  incompatibilities  of  temper  and  temperament 
that  keep  the  divorce  courts  busy.  The  club  women  who 
have  recently  made  the  surprising  discovery  that  the  ideal 
husband  and  wife  should  be  "spiritual  comrades,  mental  com- 
panions, physical  mates,"  should  go  farther  and  advise  us 
how  to  make  sure  of  that  nice  adjustment  without  some  bet- 
ter acquaintance  than  the  ordinary  lines  of  courtship  allow. 
If  it  took  the  Maeterlincks  so  many  moons  to  understand 
and  harmonize  the  "two  rates  of  vibrations,"  how  are  ordi- 
nary pairs  to  accomplish  it  in  time  to  save  them  from  the 
final  "jars"  that  land  them  in  the  divorce  courts?  Steven- 
son's suggestion  that  if  they  can  remain  together  long 
enough  without  coming  to  fisticuffs  they  will  find  "some  pos- 
sible ground  of  compromise,"  seems  to  be  the  romantic  one 
accepted  in  most  cases. 

It  is  with  this  state  of  things  in  his  mind  that  the  author 
reproaches  the  presumptuous  husband  for  risking  a  wife's 
happiness  where  he  would  never  think  of  risking  a  sister's. 
"If  she  were  only  your  sister,"  he  writes,  "how  doubtfully 
would  you  entrust  her  future  to  a  man  no  better  than  your- 
self." This  touches  upon  a  point  in  love  which  in  itself 
favors  brother  love  above  all  others.  It  may  not  be  known 
to  all  brothers  or  approved  of  all  men,  but  it  is  deepest  in 


The  Virtues  of  the  Relation  of  Brother  and  Sister    176 

the  heart  and  dreams  of  every  woman.  It  supposes  a  love 
that  would  keep  Princess  Ida  on  her  throne,  Diana  in  her 
free  and  hallowed  woods,  and  abate  not  an  iota  of  its 
strength  and  intensity.  "I  am  more  obliged  to  women  for 
this  ideal  of  the  divine  huntress,"  Stevenson  admits,  "than 
for  any  other,"  and,  until  marriage  becomes  the  high  and 
holy  thing  it  should  be,  it  is  an  ideal  to  be  cherished  every- 
where, and  naturally  one  that  must  appeal  to  brothers  who 
so  "doubtfully"  commit  their  sister  playmates  to  men  as 
they  know  them  to  be. 

For  though  there  are  men,  not  a  few,  of  feelings  as  fine 
and  sensitive  as  any  woman's,  they  are  not  alive  to  the  na- 
ture of  the  sensitive  chords  in  a  woman's  soul,  and,  perhaps, 
unless  Marcel  Prevost  can  succeed  in  fathoming  the  mys- 
tery of  such  souls,  they  never  will  be.  He  seems  to  lean  to 
the  Diana  ideal  of  the  clear-eyed  and  self-sustaining  woman, 
and  in  his  dream  of  making  marriage  a  pure  matter  of  rea- 
son, he  may  liberate  love  from  some  of  its  domestic  diffi- 
culties, and  leave  more  "slim  and  lovely  maidens  to  run  the 
woods  to  the  note  of  Diana's  horn"  and  try  a  world  where 
alL  the  men  are  brothers,  and  "all  the  brothers  valiant." 
The  interesting  and  edifying  discussion  which  this  latest  of 
the  immortals  has  stirred  up  in  literary  and  club  circles  as 
to  whether  love  wiU  ever  go  out  of  fashion,  seems  to  ignore 
the  possibility  that  it  can  live  without  marriage.  Yet  that 
very  high  priestess  at  the  altar  of  love,  Elizabeth  Barrett 
Browning,  declared  in  her  immortal  sonnets: 

If  you  can  not  love  as  the  angels  do, 

With  the  breadth  of  heaven  between  you  two, 

It  is  not  love. 

"A  virtue  for  heroes,"  she  declared  love  to  be,  and,  con- 
sidering the  heroic  demands  some  marriages  make  upon  it, 
the  terms  are  well  chosen.     "How  easy  it  would  be  for  a  man 


176    The  Virtues  of  the  Relation  of  Brother  and  Sister 

to  remain  in  love  with  his  wife  if  he  had  only  married  some 
one  else,"  is  one  of  the  clever  comments  of  a  clever  journal, 
which  verily  does  throw  a  "side  light"  on  the  situation.  Save 
with  the  brother  and  sister  who  grow  into  a  sweet  fellow- 
ship from  childhood,  the  strain  of  living  eternally  under  one 
roof  through  all  the  moods  and  commonplaces  of  domestic 
existence,  is  almost  more  than  human  nature  can  be  found 
to  stand  for  in  effecting  any  happy  relation  between  man 
and  woman.  Even  the  good  bishops  of  England  begin  to 
tell  us  that  "Every  husband  and  wife  would  be  better  if  they 
had  a  fortnight's  holiday  away  from  each  other  every  year." 
And  this,  of  course,  is  but  a  confirmation  of  the  saying  of 
the  older  teachers  that  "the  secret  of  two  people  living  hap- 
pily together  lies  in  their  not  living  too  much  together." 

Of  course,  it  is  in  the  very  nature  of  the  love  that  per- 
chance brings  them  together  that  the  mischief  lies.  For  the 
philosopher  is  right  who  says  that,  "like  other  violent  ex- 
citements, love  throws  up  not  only  what  is  best,  but  what  is 
worst  and  smallest  in  men's  character."  "Some,"  he  says, 
"are  moody,  jealous  and  exacting  when  they  are  in  love, 
who  are  honest,  downright  good-hearted  fellows  enough  in 
the  everyday  affairs  and  humors  of  the  world."  This  ver- 
ily does  explain,  on  truly  psychological  grounds,  where 
everything  in  these  days  is  required  to  rest,  why  a  brother 
may  be  more  desirable  than  a  husband  for  the  bright  "hu- 
mors" and  enjoyment  of  life.  It  would  certainly  explain 
why  man}^  a  wife,  who  has  grown  weary  of  struggling  with 
the  jealousies,  moods  and  exactions  of  the  husband  who, 
perhaps  in  his  own  wa}^  does  truly  love  her,  might  feel  like 
crying  with  the  little  child  in  its  loneliness  and  grief: 

Oh,  call  my  brother  back  to  me, 
I  cannot  play  alone. 


The  Virtues  of  the  Relation  of  Brother  and  Sister    177 

It  is  verily,  too,  when  "the  summer  comes  with  flower  and 
bee"  that  the  cry  grows  strongest,  and  they  are  happy,  in- 
deed, whether  men  or  women,  who  can  answer  to  the  child- 
hood's call  and  gather  as  a  company  of  brothers  and  sis- 
ters about  some  sunny  playground  of  youth. 


THE  ETHICS  AND  MORALS  OF  THE  LAUGHING 

HABIT 

WHAT  rational  creature  should  be  content  to  laugh 
without  understanding  the  science  of  laughter? 
And  when  he  does  understand  it,  why  should  he  laugh  at 
all?  From  Aristotle  to  Bergson  in  his  essay  on  the  comic, 
the  analytical  work  of  the  scientists  and  philosophers  is  to 
reduce  laughter  to  little  more  than  Byron's  bitter  scorn  of 
it,  and  life  together,  when  he  said:  "And  if  I  laugh  at  any 
mortal  thing,  'tis  that  I  may  not  weep."  It  is  the  defects, 
the  awkwardness,  the  "rigidity"  of  body,  mind  and  charac- 
ter of  poor  faulty  humanity  that  science  finds  provokes 
laughter,  and  there  is  no  very  pious,  just  or  kind  note  to  be 
traced  in  the  laughter  which  builds  itself  on  such  exhibi- 
tions. Incidentally  it  may  act  to  correct  them,  but  this  is 
no  thanks  to  the  "laugher,"  for  it  is  through  no  conscious 
purpose  that  he  falls  into  his  corrective  outburst,  but  by 
"some  mechanism  set  up  within  him  by  nature  that  goes  off 
on  its  own  account."  Thus,  when  he  laughs  vociferously 
at  sight  of  some  poor  wretch  slipping  up  on  a  banana  peel, 
or  chasing  his  hat  down  street  in  a  windstorm,  he  is  neither 
to  blame  for  the  heartless  explosion,  nor  to  be  commended 
for  the  incentive  to  more  prudence  or  elasticity  in  the  hu- 
man subject,  but  simply  to  be  taken  as  an  exposition  of  that 
principle  and  machinery  of  laughter  whereby  nature  pro- 
poses to  keep  her  children  from  making  themselves  ridicu- 
lous in  each  other's  eyes  by  losing  that  fawnlike  grace  and 
agility  which  should  belong  to  them. 

178 


The  Ethics  and  Morals  of  Laughing  Habit        179 

This  shows  the  deep  insight  of  Watts  when  he  put  into 
his  "Hymns  and  Spiritual  Songs"  the  admonition,  "Fly  like 
a  youthful  hart  or  roe  over  the  hills  where  spices  grow," 
and  perhaps  suggests  the  reason  why,  when  you  take  your 
lithe  thoroughbred  to  a  jaunt  over  the  hills  with  you,  you 
long  for  the  free  grace  with  which  he  leaps  over  rock  and 
gully  as  a  part  of  the  redemption  from  the  fall,  or  falls, 
which  no  Christian  grace  has  yet  furnished.  There  is  no 
question  that  we  are  all  poor  sinners  in  our  stumbling  ways, 
but  whether  we  can  be  laughed  out  of  them  is  so  doubtful 
a  matter  that  to  stake  the  whole  ethical  value  of  laughter 
upon  that  chance  seems  to  give  it  less  force  in  the  moral 
field  than  it  ought  to  have.  The  effort  of  the  psychic  cults 
to  find  the  ethical  value  of  laughter  more  directly  in  its  re- 
lation to  the  man  who  laughs  than  any  man  who  provokes 
the  laugh,  would  promise  better  results  no  doubt  if  only  the 
moving  impulse  to  laughter  could  be  somewhat  redeemed 
from  this  scientific  location  of  it  in  the  foibles  of  our  fellow- 
men.  The  introaction  of  these  two  ethical  principles,  if 
they  may  be  so  called,  of  laughter,  is  curious  enough  and 
must  be  somewhat  bewildering  to  students  of  the  whole  prob- 
lem. For,  while  laughing  at  the  awkward  man  may  tend  to 
cure  him  of  his  awkwardness,  the  wholesome  effect  of  laugh- 
ter in  the  human  being  would  be  lost  if  the  awkward  man  in 
all  the  phases  of  his  rigidity  and  grotesqueness  were  effec- 
tually cured  of  his  defects.  That  his  failings  have  a.  definite 
ethical  value  in  keeping  the  helpful  note  of  laughter,  if  it  is 
such,  in  the  ranks  of  men  is  a  legitimate  conclusion  from 
Prof.  Bergson's  claim  that  the  comic  does  not  exist  outside 
the  pale  of  the  human  and  the  "mechanical  inelasticity"  in 
the  stumbling  mortal  is  the  only  cause  and  occasion  for 
laughter  on  earth. 

To  be  perfectly  consistent,  of  course.  Prof.  Bergson  does 


180       The  Ethics  and  Morals  of  Laughing  Habit 

not  hold  laughter  up  as  one  of  the  cardinal  virtues.  Rather, 
he  gives  it  over  to  a  decidedly  low  place  in  the  scale  of  jus- 
tice, kindness,  or  really  Christian  behavior,  and  it  is  up  to 
the  laughing  philosophers  and  cheering-up  men  to  do  what 
they  can  with  what  he  has  left  of  it.  That  they  themselves 
have  turned  it  to  uses  not  altogether  to  be  commenced,  is  a 
point  declaring  itself  somewhat  too  strongly  in  the  life  of 
to-day.  "A  generation  of  spurious  laughers,"  one  writer 
declares,  as  the  result  of  the  teacher's  efforts  to  make  the 
glad  hand  and  smiling  countenance  the  sign  by  which  to  con- 
quer in  every  field  of  life  and  activity.  Laughter,  as  a 
business  asset,  the  broad  presidential  smile,  figure  in  Success 
magazines  and  records  of  political  campaigns  till  nothing 
short  of  a  "smile  like  the  Mediterranean  Sea"  seems  due  to 
spread  over  the  face  of  the  whole  nation  if  its  welfare  is  to 
be  assured.  Meantime,  however,  a  crop  of  cheerful  hypo- 
crites lurking  in  the  background,  or  dashing  across  the 
stage,  engage  the  attention  of  a  few  discerning  souls  who 
threaten  to  go  to  the  opposite  extreme  of  declaring  the  death 
of  laughter  and  the  return  of  the  serious  countenance,  the 
only  chance  for  the  regeneration  of  mankind.  Thus  is  it 
that  the  pendulum  swings  back  and  forth  in  every  line  of 
human  thought  or  endeavor,  and  whether  we  laugh  or 
whether  we  cry  we  are  sure  to  be  wrong  some  way.  It  really 
seems  as  though  Bernard  Shaw  must  be  right  when  he  sub- 
mits that  the  unconscious  self  is  the  real  and  only  power 
to  be  trusted  and  that  our  very  breathing  goes  wrong  the 
moment  t}ie  conscious  self  meddles  with  it.  When  Rabelais 
declared  that  "to  laugh  is  proper  to  the  man"  and  did  his 
brilliant  best  to  encourage  it  he  probably  contributed  as 
much  to  the  best  use  and  understanding  of  laughter  as  the 
case  allows. 

Granted  that  man  was  made  a  laughing  animal  something 


The  Ethics  and  Morals  of  Laughing  Habit       181 

better  than  the  defects  of  his  kind  ought  to  minister  to  the 
impulses  within  him.  It  is  true  that  a  close  student  of  the 
case  avers  that  while  we  smile  at  wit  it  is  only  a  gross  exhi- 
bition of  the  ridiculous  that  calls  out  laughter.  Where- 
fore, if  the  author  is  right  who  claims  that  only  man's  fan- 
tastic tricks  and  blunders  contain  the  elements  of  the  ridicu- 
lous, why,  then,  there  is  nothing  left  for  us  but  to  laugh  at 
what  makes  the  angels  weep  in  our  fellowmen.  Nor  is  there 
any  escape  from  the  proposition  that  mocking  and  unregen- 
erate  man  must  cease  his  laughter  before  much  headway 
can  be  made  in  the  uplifting  of  the  race.  When  one  con- 
siders, however,  what  a  dull  world  would  be  left  to  man  if 
laughter  should  be  wiped  out  of  it,  it  is  utterly  impossible 
to  give  the  matter  over  to  scientific  analysis  and  moral  con- 
siderations. A  something  not  dreamed  of  in  their  philoso- 
phy must  reside  in  these  subtle  springs  of  laughter  im- 
planted in  human  breasts.  For  one  thing,  despite  all  that 
may  be  said  of  their  reformatory  purposes  in  social  life,  it 
is  doubtful  if  any  true  sociability  could  endure  if  society 
reformed  its  members  to  the  extent  of  wiping  laughter  out 
of  its  ranks.  There  was  deep  sagacity  in  the  great  French- 
man's claim  that  he  must  attach  himself  to  earth  and  its 
children  by  something  silly,  although  chasing  his  hat,  or  re- 
peating Balzac's  picture  of  a  huge  animal  chasing  its  tail, 
may  not  have  been  the  figure  that  occurred  to  him. 

The  significance  of  his  position  was  admirably  presented 
by  a  recent  writer,  who  says:  "Our  souls  rebel  against  be- 
ing kept  ceaselessly  at  any  pitch,  no  matter  how  clear  and 
sonorous  the  tone  may  be.  We  may  admire  a  friend's  wit 
and  intellectual  power,  we  may  lean  upon  his  sympathy  and 
sound  judgment,  yet  it  is  his  moment  of  giving  way  to  un- 
considered mirth,  his  sudden  drop  to  sheer  nonsense,  that 
endears  him  to  us."     And  as  against  the  claim  of  one  writer, 


182       The  Ethics  and  Morals  of  Laughing  Habit 

who  says  that  "laughter  is  not  an  aid  to  progress,"  this 
friend  of  laughter  declares  that  "a  pretty  atmosphere  of 
fun  creates  a  glamour  where  the  best  of  us  may  bloom.  In 
its  mild  warmth  we  grow  and  thrive,  and,  like  the  sparkle 
of  tiny  waves  on  a  sunny  day,  it  marks  the  steady  prog- 
ress of  the  tide."  It  is  true  enough  that  much  of  the  great 
and  serious  work  of  the  world  has  been  done  by  serious  souls, 
though  in  their  very  seriousness  they  have  perchance  moved 
the  "inextinguishable  laughter  of  the  gods."  It  is  not  every 
pious  wrestler  with  his  earth  pilgrim's  progress  who  real- 
izes with  Bunyan  that  at  the  best  many  things  "are  of  such 
a  nature  as  to  make  one's  fancy  chuckle,  while  his  heart 
doth  ache."  There  is,  in  truth,  a  laughter  at  the  heart  of 
things  terrestrial  which  seers,  if  not  scientists,  are  fain  to 
admit,  and  the  most  serious-minded  actor  is  liable  to  be 
caught  in  the  tide  of  it. 

The  contretemps  of  life  have  no  respect  for  piety  or  voca- 
tion, and  the  most  solemn  actor  is  often  entangled  in  them 
somewhat  as  Mansfield  was  in  the  tragic  scene  of  "A  Pari- 
sian Romance,"  when,  as  "Baron  Chevrial,"  he  falls  dead  at 
supper  while  the  music  and  the  conversation  were  at  their 
height.  It  was  the  business  of  the  doctor  in  the  play  to  rise 
upon  the  scene  with  the  solemn  call,  "Stop  the  music;  the 
baron  is  dead."  But,  in  the  perversity  or  mischief  of  things, 
it  chanced  that  the  music  was  jangling  out  of  tune,  and  the 
doctor  bewildered  as  to  his  part.  Hence  the  audience  was 
electrified,  if  not  convulsed,  by  the  sonorous  call,  "Stop  the 
music;  it  has  killed  the  baron,"  and  even  the  corpse  was 
shadowed  by  an  awful  grin.  The  serio-comic,  the  melo- 
dramatic, is  so  liable  to  break  out  of  the  unforeseen  and 
uncontrollable,  that  it  seems  impossible  to  believe  that  some 
spirit  of  mirth  and  mischief  is  not  at  the  root  of  laughter 
in  this  whole  terrestrial  globe  of  ours.     The  immortal  bard 


The  Ethics  and  Morals  of  Laughing  Habit        183 

was  surely  in  the  secret  of  laughter  when  he  put  a  mis- 
chievous Puck  in  the  field  to  effect  those  slips  and  accidents 
in  human  pathways  which  "make  the  whole  quire  hold  their 
hips  and  lafFe."  The  laughter  of  things  as  well  as  "the 
tears  of  things"  figures  too  deeply  in  this  planet  of  ours  to 
be  wholly  ignored  in  life's  riddle.  Something  more  than  the 
"rigidity"  of  man  must  take  part  in  that  unexpected  blast 
which  flings  a  signboard  or  a  stray  fruit  rind  in  his  path, 
to  trip  him  up  just  when  he  is  passing  the  window  of  the 
elegant  Charlotte.  It  seems  best  typified  by  that  fairy, 
Robin  Goodfellow,  of  nature's  domain,  who,  as  the  poet  ex- 
plains, "leads  us'*  and  "makes  us  stray," 

AntJ  when  we  stick  in  mire  and  clay. 

Doth,  with  laughter  (and  to  la\ighter)  leave  us. 

It  may  be  that  the  angels  in  their  proper  heaven  have 
no  such  tricks  to  entrap  us  for  their  own  or  our  diversion. 
But  something  to  take  the  place  of  merry  laughter  must 
enter  into  their  shining  sphere  if  the  pleasure  is  to  be  com- 
plete, or  the  great  poet  and  believer  is  right  who  tells  us 
that  "what  we  learn  on  earth  we  shall  practice  in  heaven." 
A  land  of  no  laughter  would  certainly  be  a  chill  place  to 
spirits  tuned  to  laughter  by  all  the  brightest  things  of  earth. 
It  seems  more  natural  to  picture  those  heavenly  courts  ring- 
ing with  the  happy  laughter  of  children  who  have  found 
their  Father's  house.  For,  when  all  is  said,  the  only  laugh- 
ter worth  considering  is  that  which  bubbles  up  from  some 
spring  of  joy  in  the  heart,  and  the  gay  and  innocent  laugh- 
ter of  happy  children  is  the  sole  embodiment  of  that.  There 
is  nothing  sweeter  in  this  old  world  of  ours  than  the  laugh- 
ter of  children.  It  belongs  to  the  heaven  that  lies  about  us 
in  our  infancy  and  might  well  belong  to  the  heaven  that  may 
dawn  upon  us  in  our  angel  infancy.     Save  when  perverted 


184       The  Ethics  and  Morals  of  Laughing  Habit 

by  some  adult  influence,  the  laugh  of  the  child  has  not  one 
touch  of  that  mocking  or  derisive  character  that  science 
finds  in  the  cachinnations  of  the  man.  The  child  laughs, 
and,  perchance,  claps  his  little  hands  in  glee,  for  pure  glad- 
ness, delight  in  his  coveted  toy,  pleasure  in  his  eager  play 
or  joy  in  the  coming  of  some  beloved  idol  or  hero  in  the 
world  of  men.  It  is  here  in  the  child's  world  that  the  man 
of  science  must  study  the  problem  of  laughter  in  its  true  na- 
ture, and  he  can  do  no  better  than  to  follow  the  counsel  of 
the  poet  who  tells  him: 

Go  learn  from  a  little  child  each  day, 
Go  catch  the  lilt  of  his  laughter  gay, 
And  follow  his  dancing  feet  as  they  stray ; 
For  he  knows  the  road  to  Laughtertown, 
0  ye  who  have  lost  the  way! 


THE  CURRENT  DEMAND  FOR  AN  INSPIRED 
MILLIONAIRE 

AN  inspired  millionaire  is  one  of  the  latest  dreams  of 
the  writers.  That  brilliant  optimist,  Gerald  Stanley 
Lee,  is  on  the  track  of  him.  He  **is  the  next  best  thing 
that  is  going  to  happen  to  the  world."  He  will  not  come 
in  shoals,  but  as  a  solitary  prodigy  among  big  fishes,  setting 
the  unheard-of  example  of  not  eating  up  the  little  ones. 
"One  will  be  enough.  He  will  make  the  rest  unhappy.  They 
will  watch  him  really  living  and  doing  big  interesting  things 
with  his  money,  and  they  will  feel  bored."  He  is  due,  we 
are  told;  overdue,  we  should  say.  That  nothing  but  in- 
spiration can  bring  forth  a  millionaire  with  the  modest  tastes 
and  conceptions  of  true  living  ascribed  to  him  seems  curi- 
ous, but  perhaps  the  authors  know.  Can  any  good  come 
out  of  Dives?  "Can  a  vampire's  body  be  white.'*"  are  prob- 
lems they  have  long  been  wrestling  with,  and  if  they  have 
at  last  found  out  that  it  takes  a  Messiah  to  save  the  lost 
millionaire  it  is  charity  all  around  to  make  it  known. 

Nothing  short  of  genius,  pure  inspiration,  on  his  own  ac- 
count, ever  taught  a  writer  to  bring  dreams  and  not  ser- 
mons to  bear  upon  the  milloinaire's  case.  That  the  poor  {?) 
wretch  had  troubles  of  his  own  writers  have  discerned  afore- 
time. "Alas,  for  Dives,"  says  one,  "whom  every  reformer 
wants  to  reform,  whom  every  socialist  wants  to  strip,  whom 
every  demagogue  wants  to  fatten  on,  and  every  promoter 
and  philanthropist  and  college  president  and  trustee  of 
school,  or  hospital,  or  museum  to  'interest.'     Alas,  for  him. 

185 


186    The  Current  Demand  for  an  Inspired  Millionaire 

Every  rascal  tries  to  dip  into  him;  good  men  warn  him 
that  he  should  relax  his  strings;  bad  men  threaten  to  rip 
him  up,  and  in  the  intervals  between  assaults  his  own  con- 
science warns  him  that  he  has  far  more  than  his  proper  share 
of  this  world's  goods." 

All  this  and  more  has  been  known  of  the  plutocrat's  woes, 
yet  when  the  question  comes,  as  with  this  writer,  "Wh^t  shall 
we  say  to  him?"  the  wisest  of  his  accusers  gets  no  farther 
than  the  answer  given  here.  "Let  him  try  to  be  honest. 
That  is  all."  "Let  him  dream  dreams."  "Let  him  become 
his  own  Messiah,"  is  a  whisper  straight  from  the  gods, 
dropped  into  Gerald  Stanley  Lee's  ear.  Not,  truly,  that  the 
millionaire  and  his  advisers  have  not  had  dreams  before, 
dreams  of  empire  and  dreams  of  aggrandizement  and  even 
dreams  of  philanthropy  and  general  culture.  But  this  is 
different.  Did  any  of  our  millionaires  ever  persuade  men 
"to  believe  that  being  a  rich  man  is  one  of  the  greatest 
and  most  honorable  of  all  the  professions,  that  a  man  can 
be  rich  and  be  a  gentleman  with  his  money  down  to  the  last 
dollar — that  he  can  even  be  a  great  artist  with  it.?" 

That  is  what  Lee's  American  millionaire  is  to  do  offhand, 
although  but  lately  a  fine  French  critic  declared  that  con- 
summation in  the  art  line  a  vain  dream  for  a  class  who 
make  art  "a  thing  of  trade,  not  to  be  produced,  but  to  be 
imported  at  an  exceedingly  high  price."  Nevertheless  when 
Messiah  comes  he  will  show  us  greater  things  than  this,  for 
he  will  show  us  how  easy  instead  of  how  hard  it  is  for  a  rich 
man  to  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven  and  pull  all  other 
rich  men  in  with  him.  It  will  take  a  millionaire  Messiah  to 
do  this.  That  is  a  guess  that  ought  to  have  been  made 
long  ago. 

The  poverty  of  the  Buddhas,  aye,  the  poverty  of  the 
Christ,  appealed  to  the  poor,  provided  for  the  poor,  and 


The  Current  Demamd  for  an  Inspired  Millionaire    187 

more  or  less  excluded  the  rich,  if  not  directly  damning  them. 
In  the  dreams  of  the  disciples  there  lurked  an  idea,  to  be 
sure,  that  a  second  appearing  of  the  Christ  would  be  in 
great  power  and  glory  fitted  to  the  demands  of  the  proud- 
est of  the  millionaires,  and  perhaps  some  reflex  of  this  is 
working  in  the  subconscious  mind  of  the  present  author. 
In  any  case  a  Messiah  of  boundless  wealth  is  the  only  one 
to  show  man  how  to  overcome  temptations  which  poverty 
could  not  bring  to  any  being,  however  ready  to  be  "tempted 
in  all  points  like  as  we  are."  Both  the  opportunities  and 
temptations  of  wealth  are  shut  off  from  the  poor,  and  hence 
the  very  logic  of  life  demands  a  Messiah  who  knows  them 
to  lead  his  own  to  victory  and  salvation. 

It  is  time,  too,  that  the  Machiavellian  verdict  that  "vir- 
tue and  riches  seldom  settle  on  one  man,"  should  be  broken 
in  upon,  and  the  lofty  speculations  that  the  nonwealthy  in- 
dulge in,  as  to  the  good  they  would  do  with  riches  if  the  gods 
had  been  wise  enough  to  favor  them,  put  to  the  test  in  the 
interests  of  mankind.  It  would  certainly  help  to  elucidate, 
if  not  justify,  the  ways  of  God  to  men,  if  this  matter  of 
putting  the  mightiest  known  agency  for  relieving  the  suf- 
ferings, and  uplifting  the  souls  of  men  which  money  repre- 
sents, into  the  hands  of  the  least  worthy  could  be  changed 
or  cleared  up  in  some  way.  The  poor  have  long  enough 
had  the  gospel  of  endurance  preached  to  them  to  very  lit- 
tle betterment  of  their  woes.  If  some  one  can  stir  up  an 
inspired  Messiah  to  call  the  rich  to  the  rescue  there  may  be 
hope  of  salvation  along  reasonable  lines. 

The  marvel  and  the  mystery  of  the  whole  problem  is  that, 
with  the  power  for  such  supreme  joys  and  splendid  deeds  in 
their  hands  the  millionaires  fritter  away  their  chances  on 
such  poor  and  petty  objects  and  go  down  to  dust  and 
oblivion  without  one  real  pearl  of  life  in  their  grasp.     There 


188    The  Current  Demand  for  an  Inspired  Millionaire 

is  no  joy  known  to  men  su  great,  and  so  pure,  and  so  last- 
ing, as  the  joy  of  lifting  up  some  other  life  from  the  dark- 
ness of  want  and  deprivation,  and  slow  death  to  the  light 
and  ecstasy  of  true  life  and  opportunity  under  God's  blue 
heavens  and  with  the  means  to  bring  such  blessedness  to 
countless  worthy  lives  what  are  the  milHonaires  about 
that  they  so  rarely  improve  their  golden  chance?  The 
vision  of  "a  great  village  smoking  up  to  the  sky  blessing 
him,"  is  one  that  more  geniuses  than  Lee  have  held  before 
the  rich  man's  eyes,  Goethe's  master  stroke  was  given  to 
that  same  dream  of  the  supreme  moment  of  life  and  joy 
when  the  redeemed  Faust  looked  upon  the  great  village 
smoking  up  to  the  sky  which  he  had  lifted  from  pestilential 
bogs  to  health  and  beauty  and  the  sweet  peace  of  grassy 
lawns  and  sunlit  parlors  where,  with  no  fear  of  a  wolf  at 
the  door,  a  rescued  peasantry  could  live  and  love  as  God 
meant  his  creatures  should  the  wide  world  over. 

An  inspired  people,  or  even  a  half-awake  people,  could 
achieve  the  best  results  in  this  line,  and  so  it  is  well  that  our 
author  includes  the  inspired  laborer  in  the  millennium  he 
hopes  to  bring  about.  If  heaven  would  trust  a  few  more 
of  the  common  people  with  the  means  to  live  and  achieve  the 
world  might  even  get  along  and  swing  starward  without  any 
inspired  millionaire  to  help  it.  It  is  poverty  that  ruins  the 
world,  that  curses  mankind,  that  blights  talent,  dwarfs  in- 
tellect and  spreads  crime  and  wretchedness  everywhere. 
Wealth,  fairly  earned  and  distributed,  would  remedy  the 
whole  evil,  and  leave  no  work  for  the  inspired  millionaire  to 
do.  In  fact,  it  would  wipe  out  the  millionaire,  inspired  or 
uninspired,  and  end  all  the  misery  that  riches  in  the  hands 
of  a  few  have  brought  into  the  world. 

When  Seneca  wrote  riches  "the  greatest  source  of  human 
trouble,"  it  was,  as  with  every  other  philosopher  of  such 


The  Current  Demand  for  an  Inspired  Millionaire    189 

faith,  the  abuse  of  riches  that  he  had  in  mind  whereby  the 
many  become  minions  or  slaves  of  the  few.  Freedom,  which 
is  the  true  end  of  riches,  can  bring  trouble  to  no  man,  nor 
will  men  ever  become  free  for  the  better  things  of  life  till 
means  sufficient  to  end  the  daily  grind  for  its  poorer  neces- 
sities can  be  secured  to  all.  Paul  may  plant  and  Apollos 
water,  but  no  harvest  of  souls  will  ever  be  gathered  in  till 
people  have  a  chance  to  pause  in  the  struggle  for  bread  to 
find  out  that  they  have  souls.  Sermons  to  half-starved  men 
are  about  the  climax  of  idiocy.  Feed  my  sheep  was  the  be- 
ginning and  end  of  all  the  master's  teaching  to  the  zealous 
disciple  who  sought  to  bring  religion  to  bear  upon  the 
world. 

Poverty  and  crime,  save  by  some  special  interposition  of 
divine  grace,  are  inseparable.  "If  I  were  starving  I  would 
steal,"  said  a  prominent  minister  of  to-day.  "Hadst  thou 
been  born  and  reared,  surrounded  and  tempted  like  the 
criminal  who  excites  thy  indignation  thou  shouldst  prob- 
ably not  be  better  than  he,"  says  Bishop  Spalding,  and  in 
the  face  of  the  recent  disclosure  of  starving  school  children 
in  New  York  how  sternly  sounds  his  statement.  "They  who 
starve  the  body  can  not  nourish  the  mind,  and  if  the  heads 
of  institutions  of  learning  have  not  the  means  to  supply 
copious,  wholesome  food,  they  should  be  made  to  withdraw 
from  the  business  of  education,  but  if,  having  the  means, 
they  seek  to  save  money  at  the  expense  of  health  and  life, 
they  should  be  dealt  with  as  criminals." 

Before  Lee  lands  his  inspired  millionaire  in  the  field,  a 
goodly  number  of  uninspired  millionaires  may  have  to  be 
dealt  with  as  criminals,  if  such  work  as  the  schools  and  courts 
have  been  lately  disclosing  goes  on.  The  dream  of  men  and 
lawyers  who  "will  not  sell  their  souls  to  make  grand  larceny 
possible"  may  have  to  achieve  realization  first.     It  is  along 


190    The  Current  Demand  for  an  Inspired  Millionaire 

this  line  that  the  nation's  progress  is  most  confidently  pre- 
dicted by  some.  Before  the  Circuit  Court  of  Appeals  took 
up  the  case  we  were  assured  that  a  fine  of  $29,000,000,  im- 
posed by  a  Federal  Court  upon  a  "wicked  millionaire," 
meant  salvation  and  inspiration  for  a  whole  nation.  Now 
we  seem  to  be  rather  thrown  back  upon  the  mercy  of  the 
individual  Croesus  again,  and  unless  writers  can  inspire  him 
to  good  behavior,  or  colleges  confer  honor  as  well  as  degrees 
upon  him,  there  is  no  more  hope  than  before. 

The  demand  for  a  Messiah  is  the  true  herald  of  his  ap- 
proach, and  people  as  well  as  gods  must  take  a  hand  in  cre- 
ating the  atmosphere  of  truth  and  genius  that  fosters 
"world  singers"  and  "Messiahs,"  to  build  up  a  world.  It 
is  easy  to  see  that  special  powers  and  graces  must  attend 
the  millionaire  who  is  to  "forge  out  the  great  faiths"  that 
will  lead  his  people  to  pious  and  unselfish  world-ends  and 
achievements.  There  have  been  millionaires — quite  a  few 
— "as  good  as  anybody,"  but  they  have  not  redeemed  their 
class.  A  special  baptism  from  the  heavenly  powers,  such 
as  "great  artists"  know,  may  naturally  be  called  for  by  any 
curious  creed,  however,  which  supposes  that  the  majority 
of  men  are  not  to  be  trusted  with  wealth.  Just  the  reverse 
of  it  is  what  ought  to  be  the  case,  and  what  ought  to  be  will 
be  before  the  world  drama  is  closed.  Even  a  moderate  de- 
gree of  wealth  puts  a  man  in  position  to  do  noble  service 
both  for  himself  and  his  fellow-men,  and  to  suppose  that 
human  beings  are  made  of  such  poor  stuff  as  to  go  on  pro- 
testing and  abusing  this  grand  chance  forever,  is  to  suppose 
heaven  has  made  a  race  of  beings  fit  only  for  the  death  and 
damnation  to  which  zealous  Calvinists  consigned  them. 
There  is  certainly  a  strange  misapprehension  with  the  best 
of  writers  on  this  point. 

The  maxims  are  endless  which  make  wealth  and  prosper- 


r 


The  Current  Demand  for  an  Inspired  Millionaire    191 

ity  the  most  dangerous  bequests  to  man.  And  yet  the  most 
that  can  be  claimed  is  that  they  bring  out  what  is  in  man, 
and  offer  the  good  as  well  as  bad  a  chance  to  declare  itself. 
It  is  not  true,  either,  as  even  the  genial  Stevenson  says,  that 
"it  is  as  difficult  to  be  generous  on  $30,000  a  year  as  on 
$1000  a  year."  The  man  who  can  barely  make  both  ends 
meet  in  the  struggle  for  daily  life  has  no  resource  but  to 
smother  every  generous  impulse  within  him.  The  fact  is, 
that  it  is  impossible  to  say  what  a  man's  true  character, 
taste  or  ability  may  be,  until  a  fair  measure  of  wealth  has 
given  him  freedom  and  opportunity  for  self-expression.  Let 
such  opportunity  become  general,  and  it  might  turn  out, 
as  Fenelon  long  since  told  us,  that  "we  are  all  inspired,  but 
our  mode  of  life  stifles  it." 


THE  MODERN  DEMAND  FOR  THE  VIRTUE  OF 
CHEERFULNESS 

WHERE  is  the  Milton  who  would  venture  to  put  forth 
an  ode  to  melancholy  in  these  days?  An  ode  to 
mirth  is  the  demand  of  the  hour.  "Sadness  as  inseparably 
connected  with  the  sublime"  is  a  poetic  principle  that  no 
new  Poe  is  born  to  proclaim.  The  sweetness  of  music  that 
the  minor  key  closes  floats  faint  and  far  beneath  the  jubi- 
lante  which  the  clamorous  world  now  demands  of  its  sing- 
ers. What  this  may  have  to  do  with  that  loss  of  all  great 
harpers,  which  the  higher  critics  lament,  the  poets  must 
consider  for  themselves.  But  in  the  humbler  ranks  of  life 
and  talent  there  seem  to  be  losses  entailed  by  the  festive 
demands  to  which  the  jovial  masters  of  the  feast  are  not 
wholly  alive.  It  is  something  kin  in  rather  reversed  fash- 
ion to  the  situation  of  the  old-time  reveler  at  the  prohibi- 
tion banquet  of  to-day,  as  his  toast  gives  it: 

Here's  to  a  temperance  supper, 

With  water  in  glasses  tall. 
And  coffee  and  tea  to  end  with — 

And  me  not  there  at  all. 

The  glad  song  and  the  glad  countenance  and  even  the 
glad  hand  still  leave  so  much  of  the  real  absent  that  the  es- 
tablishment of  man's  truest  relations  and  friendships  upon 
the  basis  of  them  somehow  misses  fulfillment.  They  lack 
something  of  that  touch  of  nature  which  belongs  to  human 
frailties    and   susceptibilities   to   pain   and   lapses,   that   no 

192 


j  Modern  Demand  for  the  Virtue  of  Cheerfulness     193 

amount  of  Christian  or  any  other  science  can  quite  do  away 
with.  The  stern  effort  to  deny  them  in  ourselves  or  ignore 
tlicm  in  our  next  friends  acts  something  like  the  cup  of  cold 
water  at  the  feast  or  an  icy  veil  of  concealment  through 
which  the  warmest  sympathies  of  the  soul  can  not  penetrate. 

It  may  be  true  enough  that  the  divinest  sympathy  will 
declare  itself  along  the  line  of  tlie  glad  hosannas  when  we 
shall  become  as  the  angels,  or  even  the  good  and  trusting 
humans  that  we  ought  to  be.  But  while  the  shades  of  the 
prison  house  cling  about  us  and  make  pitfalls  for  our  steps 
and  graves  for  our  loved  ones,  it  does  not  seem  strange  that 
even  the  Master  himself  forgot  the  glory  that  was  revealed 
to  weep  at  the  tomb  of  Lazarus,  or  groan  in  spirit  over  the 
sins  and  sufferings  of  a  wandering  world.  Unquestionably, 
it  was  the  tenderness  of  a  sympathy  born  of  this  recogni- 
tion that  knit  him  so  closely  in  ties  of  love  and  friendship 
to  the  weeping  sisters,  Martha  and  Mary. 

It  is  a  truth  which  any  one  may  test  for  himself  that, 
whatever  paeons  may  be  sung  to  the  cheerful  friend,  it  is  the 
one  who  turns  to  you  in  sorrow  that  most  stirs  the  deeps  of 
tenderness,  sympathy  and  affection  in  the  soul. 

There  is  a  chill,  therefore,  in  any  philosophy  which  meets 
the  troubles  and  sorrows  of  an  imperfect  world  with  the 
calm  claim  that  they  are  nonexistent.  It  well  justifies  the 
recent  sage  reflection  that  "heights  of  philosophy  are  good 
places  on  which  to  freeze."  But  more  than  that,  it  misses 
the  true  height  and  depth  of  human  philosophy  which  ever 
takes  into  account  the  finite  mysteries,  the  tears  in  things 
and  the  inevitable  sadness  that  springs  from  what  is  best 
and  greatest  in  man  himself.  Carlyle  recognizes  this  when 
he  says,  "Man's  unhappiness  comes  in  part  from  his  great- 
ness." 

A  later  than  Carlyle,  in  the  teeth  of  all  the  present  pro- 


194     Modern  Demand  for  the  Virtue  of  Cheerfulness 

test,  gives  man  permission  to  admit  his  ills  and  even  turn 
them  to  account  in  the  world.  "Why  should  we  wish  to 
conceal  the  fact  that  we  have  suffered,  that  we  suffer,  that 
we  are  likely  to  suffer  to  the  end?"  says  Benson,  who  strikes 
almost  the  Miltonic  note  in  the  "Sable  Goddess"  behalf. 
"There  is  a  significance  in  suffering.  It  is  not  all  a  clumsy 
error,  a  well-meaning  blunder.  It  is  a  deliberate  part  of 
the  constitution  of  the  world."  To  wisely  weigh  our  sorrow 
with  our  comfort,  he  holds,  with  Shakespeare,  the  logical 
course.  And  for  those  who  scorn  such  concession  to  "self- 
asserted  ills,"  he  comes  back  with  yet  finer  scorn  in  his  own 
gentle  and  inimitable  fashion :    "My  belief  is  this,"  he  writes : 

"As  I  make  my  slow  pilgrimage  through  the  world,  a  cer- 
tain sense  of  beautiful  mystery  seems  to  gather  and  grow. 
I  see  that  many  people  find  the  world  dreary,  some  find  it 
interesting,  some  surprising,  some  find  it  entirely  satisfac- 
tory. But  those  who  find  it  satisfactory  seem  to  me  as  a 
rule  to  be  natures  who  do  not  trouble  their  heads  very  much 
about  other  people,  but  go  cheerfully  and  optimistically  on 
their  way,  closing  their  eyes  as  far  as  possible  to  things 
painful  and  sorrowful."  "Well,  to  speak  very  sincerely  and 
humbly,  such  a  life,"  he  adds,  "seems  to  me  the  worst  kind 
of  a  failure."  And  as  to  the  call  for  happiness  every- 
where, he  writes:  "The  only  happiness  worth  seeking  for 
is  a  happiness  which  takes  all  these  dark  things — in  the  track 
of  suffering  and  the  most  sorrowful  mystery  of  death — 
into  account,  looks  them  in  the  face,  reads  the  secret  of  their 
dim  eyes  and  set  lips,  dwells  with  them  and  learns  to  be  tran- 
quil in  their  presence." 

Faith  and  philosophy  may  soothe  in  time,  but  they  can 
not  do  away  with  the  reality  of  our  pains  and  losses.  The 
very  science  which  proposes  to  do  this  for  us  in  many  re- 
spects only  bewilders.     It  is  as  Benson  says:     "More  and 


Modern  Demand  for  the  Virtue  of  Cheerftdness     195 

more  we  feel  the  impenetrability  of  the  mystery  that  sur- 
rounds us;  the  discoveries  of  science,  instead  of  raising  the 
veil,  seem  only  to  make  the  problem  more  complex,  more 
bizarre,  more  insoluble."  The  form  of  so-called  science, 
which  takes  refuge  in  denials  and  assertions  back  of  experi- 
ence, though  commendably  enough  reaching  out  to  the  mind 
of  God  for  illumination,  in  no  way  clears  up  the  problem 
which  the  claims  of  infinite  love  and  infinite  power  bring 
to  the  entrance  of  so  much  that  is  not  love  into  the  scheme 
of  being.  To  trace  it  to  "a  misunderstanding  of  the  truth 
of  being,"  is  only  to  push  the  question  a  step  farther  back 
and  leave  the  finite  mind  still  pondering  why  the  truth  of 
being  was  not  made  clear  to  it  at  the  outset.  Aye,  and  who 
is  to  be  trusted  to  make  it  clear  now.^ 

Only  I  discern 
Infinite  passion  and  the  pain 
Of  finite  hearts  that  yearn, 

says  Browning,  and  the  wisest  of  our  teachers  do  not  seem 
to  discern  much  more.  To  grant  us  some  hours  of  sadness, 
and  some  hearts  to  come  closer  for  the  sympathy  in  it,  is 
therefore  a  part  of  our  human  heritage  which  should  not  be 
taken  from  us.  Since  man  was  made  a  little  lower  than  the 
angels,  some  sympathy  with  dust  as  well  as  deity  seems  es- 
sential for  that  perfect  understanding  which  is  the  basis  of 
perfect  love  anywhere. 

"The  trouble  with  perfect  people,"  says  a  scornful  Philis- 
tine, "is  that  they  expect  too  much  of  their  friends.  They 
demand  that  you  shall  be  as  good  as  they,  and  good  in  the 
same  way,  otherwise  they  throw  you  into  the  Irish  Sea." 
The  friend  who  will  take  us  as  we  are  and  not  demand,  like 
the  photographers,  that  we  shall  look  pleasant  despite  all 
that  nature  and  time  may  be  doing  to  prevent  it,  is  the  one 


196     Modern  Demand  for  the  Virtue  of  Cheerfulness 

to  come  closest  to  us  after  all.  There  is  a  hint  for  the 
modern  philosophers  in  the  frankness  of  the  woman  who  re- 
plied to  the  photographer's  request  that  she  assume  a  more 
pleasing  expression,  "I  suppose  I  can  do  it  if  you  insist,  but 
I  can  tell  you  right  now  it  won't  look  like  me." 

Shadow  and  sunshine,  smiles  and  tears,  enter  so  inerad- 
icably  into  the  fabric  of  life  that  the  person  who  wears  the 
smile  that  won't  come  off  has  too  much  the  character  of  the 
figure  on  a  billboard  for  yearning,  throbbing  humanity  to 
take  him  very  tenderly  to  heart.  There  is  truth,  no  doubt, 
in  Dr.  Johnson's  assertion  that  the  habit  of  looking  on  the 
bright  side  of  things  is  worth  a  thousand  pounds  a  year, 
but  only  he  who  recognizes  that  there  is  another  side  can 
do  this  to  any  saving  purpose  in  the  world  of  men.  One 
must  go  to  the  deeps  of  sorrow  to  declare  the  sublimity  of 
joy.  Denying  or  ignoring  the  pains  and  wrongs  and  sor- 
rows of  our  common  humanity  can  never  reach  the  heart  of 
the  trouble.  The  Christ  himself,  as  a  late  writer  says,  in- 
stead of  denying,  *'met  them  face  to  face,  with  perfect  di- 
rectness, perfect  sympathy,  perfect  perceptions."  "But  he 
made  allowance  for  weakness  and  despaired  of  none.  He 
proved  that  nothing  was  unbearable,  but  that  the  human 
spirit  can  face  the  worst  calamities  with  an  indomitable  sim- 
plicity which  adorns  it  with  an  imperishable  beauty  and 
proves  it  to  be  indeed  divine." 

This  seems  to  be  the  true  basis  for  that  cheerful  spirit 
which  is  so  largely  in  demand.  But  it  is  not  exactly  the  one 
that  the  professedly  and  professionally  cheerful  person  lays 
down  for  us,  and  that  is  why  some  ungrateful  souls,  who  do 
not  recognize  that  at  least  his  aims  are  good,  call  him  alto- 
gether depressing.  Another  point  in  the  philosophy  which 
is  too  commonly  ignored  is  the  part  which  nature  takes  in 
fashioning  man  to  his  moods.     "Some  people  are  born  to 


I 


Modem  Demand  for  the  Virtiie  of  CheerfiUriess     197 

make  life  pretty  and  others  to  grumble  that  it  is  not  pretty," 
says  George  Eliot,  and  though  multitudinous  counsels  are 
brought  to  the  help  of  the  latter  class,  yet  until  the  sur- 
geons take  hold  of  them  it  is  not  probable  that  the  responsi- 
bility can  be  entirely  fastened  upon  them  nor  the  happy 
thought  cure  be  made  very  effective. 

They  seem  to  be  as  incorrigible  as  the  man  who  insisted 
upon  hanging  to  a  street  car  strap  though  the  conductor 
pointed  him  to  a  vacant  seat,  because  he  was  elected  to  "show 
the  street  car  indignities"  and  proposed  to  say  truthfully 
that  he  "had  ridden  downtown  six  successive  days  hanging  to 
a  strap.'* 

There  are  always  some  people  who  set  out  in  plain  dress 
and  repellant  exterior  to  find  the  seamy  side  of  life  and  con- 
gregations, and  they  invariably  find  it.  But  they  are 
hardly  the  ones  who  appeal  to  us  in  the  tender  fashion  of 
George  Eliot's  heroine,  who  whispers,  "Pray  make  a  point 
of  liking  me,  in  spite  of  my  deficiencies,"  or  can  fathom  the 
great  poet's  meaning  when  he  said  that  next  to  the  pleasure 
of  love  is  its  pain.  A  shallow  pessimism  and  a  shallow  op- 
timism alike  miss  the  true  meaning  and  grandeur  of  life. 
Likewise  they  miss  that  finer  understanding  upon  which  hu- 
man ties  and  friendships  are  based,  and  that  subtle  and 
pensive  spell  which  the  very  sense  and  mystery  of  mortality 
brings  to  the  "bright  glints  of  immortality"  flashing  for- 
ever through  the  fleshly  bars. 

Even  worldly  prosperity,  which  lifts  a  friend  too  absorb- 
ingly into  the  sunlight  lessens  ofttimes  the  tender  tie  that 
other  days  have  bound.  It  can  be  nothing  else  than  this 
that  gave  us  that  dreary  maxim  of  La  Rochefoucauld  which 
submits  that  "in  the  adversity  of  our  best  friends  we  often 
find  something  that  is  not  exactly  displeasing."  That  they 
will  come  nearer  to  us  in  sorrow  than  in  joy  may  be  a  selfish 


198     Modem  Demand  for  the  Virtue  of  Cheerfulness 

feeling,  but  it  proclaims  a  human  truth  that  philosophy  can 
not  afford  to  ignore.  It  is  interwoven  for  some  purpose  in 
that  grand  virtue  of  sympathy  wherein  lies  man's  true  great- 
ness and  chance  of  usefulness  to  his  fellow-men.  And  herein 
consists  the  danger  of  any  code  of  life  that  would  separate 
itself  from  human  conditions  and  needs,  and  deny  both  ex- 
istence and  sympathy  to  such  conditions.  For  the  author 
is  right  who  says:  "We  can  not  solve  the  mystery  of  this 
difficult  world ;  but  we  may  be  sure  of  this,  that  it  is  not  for 
nothing  that  we  are  set  in  the  midst  of  interests  and  rela- 
tionships, of  liking  and  loving,  of  tenderness  and  mirth,  of 
sorrow  and  pain."  If  we  are  to  get  the  most  and  best  out 
of  life  we  must  not  seclude  ourselves  from  these  things.  One 
of  the  nearest  and  simplest  of  duties  is  sympathy  with  others, 
and  sympathy  in  no  limited  sense,  but  sympathy  that  we  can 
only  gain  through  looking  at  humanity  in  its  wholeness. 


ENCHANTMENT  OF  THE  GREEN-ROBED  FOREST 
MONARCH S 

RUSKIN  is  right.  It  was  a  beautiful  thing  when  God 
tliought  of  a  tree.  Of  all  the  pageant  train  of  nature 
that  puts  on  the  bloom  and  splendor  of  Litanias  courts  to 
keep  the  summer  festival,  this  monarch  of  the  forest  strikes 
deepest  into  the  heart  of  earth,  as  it  also  climbs  highest  into 
the  blue  of  heaven.  The  daisies  and  the  buttercups  nestle 
close  to  the  ground;  even  the  lilies  and  the  roses  come  and 
go  in  transient  fellowship  with  the  sod  and  the  grass  on  the 
hillside  withers  at  the  parched  earth's  breath  or  "the  wind 
passes  over  it  and  it  is  gone."  But  "the  green-robed  sen- 
ators of  mighty  woods,  branch-charmed  by  the  earnest 
stars,  dream  on  and  on"  in  the  azure  deeps  of  heaven,  and 
by  a  myriad  finger  points  of  verdant  green  and  airy  light- 
ness lift  man  farthest  from  the  earth.  No  doubt  it  is  this 
close  communion  with  the  skies,  and  all  the  whispering  voices 
of  the  upper  air,  which  has  given  to  these  high  priests  of 
nature  the  "anciently  reported  spells"  which  Druids  and 
sibyls  sages  and  seers,  poets  and  mystics  of  all  ages  have 
ascribed  to  them.  Nor  can  these  fair  humanities  of  old 
religions  quite  forsake  their  haunts  in  "piny  mountain"  or 
"forest  by  slow  stream."  Still,  a  presence  is  in  the  silent 
wood,  a  sense  of  life  "more  deep  and  true"  than  any  mortal 
knows  is  in  the  trusting  sway  of  the  delicate  branches  to  any 
softest  breeze  or  rushing  whirlwind  of  the  skies  that  may 
sweep  over  them.  And  science  tells  us,  could  we  but  turn 
less  sense-dulled  ears  to  their  whispering  voices,  the  very 

199 


wo     Enchantment  of  the  Green-Robed  Forest  Monarchs 

music  of  the  spheres  would  come  down  to  us  on  their  eolian 
harps  of  melody.  Such  secrets  as  the  talking  oaks  of 
Dodona  revealed  to  the  ancient  Greek,  may  verily  belong  to 
their  high  union  with  the  heart  of  nature,  could  souls  as  kin 
to  them  as  the  nature-loving  Greeks  once  more  be  found. 
Closest  in  all  the  symbolism  of  the  outside  world  to  the  inner 
verities  the  history  of  the  tree  might  almost  stand  for  the 
history  of  man  in  all  his  mortal  hopes  and  strivings.  Not 
only  in  his  early  Eden  did  it  play  sentinel  and  second  in  his 
spirit  gains  and  losses,  but  all  along  the  path  of  history  in 
his  failing  like  the  green  bay  tree,  his  falling  like  "the  leaves 
that  strew  the  brooks  in  Vallombrosa."  The  mysteries  of 
ancient  faiths,  the  oracles  of  the  gods,  the  secrets  of  the 
under  world,  were  whispered  man  from  the  leafy  temples  of 
Egeria,  the  sacred  oaks  of  Dodona,  and  written  on  the 
sibylline  leaves  of  nature  everywhere.  In  the  gardens  and 
groves  of  Sophocles  the  heavenly  muse  decended  to  mortal 
man,  and  in  the  Arcadian  forest  the  pipe  of  Pan  first  woke 
the  world  to  tuneful  melody.  Woodland  bowers  for  lovers, 
forest  temples  for  gods,  classic  elms  for  scholars,  aye,  char- 
ter oaks  for  nations,  and  immemorial  pines  as  sentinels  of 
the  ages,  have  been  so  much  a  part  of  the  world's  history 
that  the  best  of  life  would  seem  to  have  been  lost  if  simply 
the  tree  in  the  midst  of  all  earth's  gardens  had  been  "caught 
away"  from  sinful  man,  though  all  the  sweet  flowers  and 
grasses  of  the  field  had  still  remained  to  him. 

Beautiful  glooms,  soft  drinks  in  the  noonday  fire, 
Woodland  privacies,  closets  of  lone  desire. 
Emerald  twilights. 
Virginal  shy  lights. 
Wrought  of  the  leaves  to  allure  to  the  whisper  of  vows 
When  lovers  pace  timidly  down  through  the  green  colon- 
nades 


I 


Enchantment  of  the  Green-Robed  Forest  Monarchs     201 

Of  the  dim,  sweet  woods,  of  the  dear,  dark  woods, 
Of  the  heavenly  woods  and  glades. 

Such  sanctuary  does  the  forest  offer  to  the  yearning  heart 
of  man,  while,  in  the  "passion  of  the  groves"  a  myriad  winged 
things  in  leafy  bough  or  covert  thrill  to  the  soul  of  love  and 
waft  the  choral  strain  far  up  to  the  blue  empyrean.  "  'Tis 
love  creates  the  woodland  melody,"  said  the  season's  poet, 
Thomson,  **and  all  this  waste  of  music  is  the  voice  of  love." 

How  naturally  must  the  ancient  oak  record  the  secrets 
of  the  eternal  love,  and  if  in  days  of  human  innocence  it  whis- 
pered them  to  kin  and  trusting  creatures,  the  miracle  was 
not  so  strange  a  one.  A  "talking  oak"  that  was  wiser  than 
any  talking  man  or  woman  in  the  world,  is  something  that 
"the  intelligible  forms  of  ancient  poets"  found  not  so  diffi- 
cult to  mingle  with  the  faith,  which  held  "that  every  flower 
enjoys  the  air  it  breathes." 

"He  who  forgets  the  tree  under  whose  shade  he  gamboled 
in  the  days  of  his  youth  is  a  stranger  to  the  sweetest  im- 
pressions of  the  human  heart,"  says  one  of  the  kin  spirits  to 
"the  venerable  brotherhood  of  trees."  It  is  a  beautiful  play 
upon  the  same  chord,  too,  which  led  the  Arabian  poet  to 
greet  the  solitary  palm  tree  at  Seville  with  a  cry  of  sympa- 
thy and  fellowship  in  its  lonely  and  alien  estate.  "O  palm 
tree !"  he  moans,  in  uncontrollable  sorrow,  "like  myself,  thou 
art  alone  in  this  land;  thou  also  art  away  from  thy  kin- 
dred. Thou  weepest  and  closest  the  calix  of  thy  flowers. 
Why?  Dost  thou  lament  the  generating  seed  scattered  on 
the  mountains?"  And  the  tree  made  answer:  "Yea,  I  do; 
for,  although  they  all  may  take  root  in  a  congenial  soil,  like 
that  watered  by  the  Euphrates,  yet  orphans  are  they  all, 
since  Beni  Abba  has  driven  me  away  from  my  family."  Less 
gentle,  yet  full  of  the  same  human  sympathy,  is  the  answer 


202     Enchantment  of  the  Green-Robed  Forest  Monarchs 

which  the  giant  oak  in  the  Merlin  idyll  makes  to  the  false 
Vivian,  who  would  steal  the  enchanter's  spell.  Challenging 
all  earth  and  heaven  to  blast  her  "brain  to  cinder"  if  she 
lies,  suddenly  the  tree  that  shone  "white  listed  through  the 
gloom,  with  deafening  crash  darts  spikes  and  splinters  of 
the  wood  the  dark  earth  round,"  till  Vivian,  dazed  by  the 
"livid  flickering  fork  and  deafened  with  the  stammering 
crack,"  flings  herself  upon  Merlin's  mercy  and  protection. 
Nor  does  the  raging  cease  till  Merlin  himself  "o'er  talked 
and  overworn"  by  the  beguiling  Vivian,  yields  up  the  charm, 
and  sinks  "as  lost  to  life,  and  use,  and  name,  and  fame,"  in 
the  riven  oak's  bosom.  Tree  and  enchanter  go  down  to- 
gether, and  who  shall  say  that  the  same  pain  of  ruin  and 
defeat  does  not  run  through  the  kindred  life-currents  in 
each?  And,  for  the  joy  of  life,  and  all  that  youth  and  love 
can  dream  of  being's  crown,  let  loose  a  Rosalind  and  Orlando 
in  the  forest  of  Arden,  and  see  how  truly  the  "trees  become 
the  books"  the  "barks,  the  thoughts,"  and  every  eye  in  the 
forest  "the  witnesses"  that  deify  the  name  of  Love  and 
Rosalind.  Or,  drop  some  brooding  Jaques  "under  an  oak, 
whose  antique  root  peeps  out  upon  the  brook  that  brawls 
along  the  wood,"  and  watch  him  "lose  and  neglect  the  creep- 
ing hours  of  time"  in  its  soft  murmuring  of  immemorial 
days  and  endless  summer  calm.  How  truly  do  the  "incom- 
municable trees,"  by  some  finer  sense  than  speech,  still  call 
to  us  to  come  and  live  with  them  and  "quit  our  weary,  worry- 
ing life  of  solemn  trifles."  And  most  when  spring  and  the 
warm  south  wind  stirs  with  one  breath  the  sap  in  the  maple 
and  the  blood  in  the  impassioned  soul  of  man,  does  the  cry 
of  Amiens  ring  through  the  land. 

Come  hither,  come  hither,  come  hither, 
Under   the   greenwood   tree. 
Who  loves  to  lie  with  me, 


Enchantment  of  the  Green-Rohed  Forest  Monarchs     203 

And  tune  his  merry  note 
Unto  the  sweet  bird's  throat; 

Here  sliall  he  see 

No  enemy. 

Alas,  that  so  many  a  shepherd  and  courtier  alike  should 
be  in  "too  parlous  a  state"  to  accept  so  gracious  a  call. 
The  Arden  forest  is  still  "a  geographical  puzzle"  to  most 
hearers,  and  to  "loiter  in  its  tangled  glens  and  magnificent 
depths,"  when  all  the  captains  of  fortune  and  industry  are 
rallying  their  hosts  for  battle  is  held  fit  only  for  "the  fool, 
the  motley  fool,"  that  Jaques  met  in  the  forest.  Only  the 
crown  of  wild  olive,  that  came  after  war  and  toil  "to  cool 
the  tired  brow  througli  a  few  years  of  peace,"  can  even  re- 
motely appeal  to  the  driven  multitude  to-day,  from  the 
whole  brotherhood  of  trees,  and  Ruskin  has  a  strenuous 
time  in  bringing  even  that  home  to  them.  "Will  you,  still 
throughout  the  puny  totality  of  your  life  weary  yourselves 
in  the  fire  of  vanity?"  he  sternly  asks.  "Was  the  grass  of 
the  earth  made  green  for  your  shroud  only,  not  for  your 
bed?  And  can  you  never  lie  down  upon  it,  but  only  under 
it?  The  heathen,  to  whose  creed  you  have  returned,  thought 
not  so.  They  knew  that  life  brought  its  contest,  but  they 
expected  from  it  also  the  crown  of  all  contest.  No  proud 
one,  no  jeweled  circlet  flaming  through  heaven,  above  the 
height  of  the  unmerited  throne ;  only  some  few  leaves  of  wild 
olive  cool  to  the  tired  brow  through  a  few  years  of  peace. 
.  .  .  This,  such  as  it  is,  you  may  win  while  yet  you  live — 
type  of  honor  and  sweet  rest."  It  is  strange  that  with  the 
Christian  centuries  the  mission  of  the  sacred  grove  is  so 
lost  to  man. 

"The  olive  grove  of  Academe,  Plato's  retirement,  where 
the  attic  bird  trills  her  thick  warbled  notes  the  summer 
long."     How  far  in  the  dim  past  it  lies ! 


204     Enchantment  of  the  Green-Robed  Forest  Monarchs 

In  such  green  palaces  [says  Waller]  the  first  kings  reigned, 
Slept  in  their  shades  and  angels  entertained, 
With  such  old  counsellors  they  did  advise, 
And  by  frequenting  sacred  groves  grew  wise. 

The  Hebrew  story  itself  hides  the  secret  of  all  life  in  the 
mystic  tree,  the  tree  of  life  in  the  midst  of  the  garden ;  and, 
shining  through  all  the  phantasmagorie  of  the  dreamy 
John's  apocalyptic  vision,  rises  again  the  symbolic  tree,  the 
tree  of  life,  "on  either  side  of  the  river,"  and  "in  the  midst," 
now,  "of  the  paradise  of  God."  Why  should  the  Bible 
Christian  yield  up  to  David,  priest  or  pagan,  "the  presence 
in  the  wood,"  the  tongues  in  trees,  and  human  good  and 
kinship  in  everything,  especially  when  not  an  aspen  "dusks 
and  shivers"  without  breathing  of  the  sacred  cross  and  all 
the  love  of  heaven  let  down  to  earth  in  the  wondrous  life, 
yielding  itself  for  man  on  the  sorrowful  tree.  Not  alone 
in  deference  to  the  crown  of  wild  olive,  but  to  the  crown 
of  thorns,  might  a  Christian  artist  bespeak  surcease  to 
tyranny  and  strife  and  selfishness,  and  a  return  to  sweet 
peace  and  love  and  heavenly  trust  within  the  templed  groves 
and  pillared  aisles  of  the  great  All  Father.  "Free-hearted- 
ness  and  graciousness  and  undisturbed  trust  and  requited 
love  and  the  sight  of  the  peace  of  others,  and  the  ministry 
to  pain — these,"  says  Ruskin,  "and  the  blue  sky  above  you, 
and  the  sweet  waters  and  flowers  of  the  earth  beneath;  and 
mysteries  and  presences  innumerable  of  living  things"  in 
wood  and  wold — "these  may  yet  be  your  riches,  untorment- 
ingly  and  divine;  serviceable  for  the  life  that  now  is,  and 
not  without  promise  of  that  which  is  to  come." 

Again  the  bud  is  on  the  bough, 
The  leaf  is  on  the  tree. 


Enchantment  of  the  Green-Robed  Forest  Monarchs    205 

And  to  the  quickened  heart  of  man  "the  south  wind  brings 
warmth  and  desire."  Many  voices  call  in  many  varying 
strains  to  tired  and  wayworn  souls.  But  the  poet  strikes  the 
keynote  to  the  true  harmony  and  refreshment  when  he  sings : 

O,  good  earth,  warm  with  youth, 

My  childhood  heart  renew, 
Make  me  elate,  sincere. 

Simple  and  glad  as  you. 

O,  waters  running  free, 

With  full  exultant  song. 
Give  me  for  worn-out  dream, 

Life  tliat  is  clean  and  strong. 


THE  SALUTARY  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  SPIRIT  OF 
THE  WINDS 

THE  wind  that  bloweth  where  it  listeth  certainly  does 
make  havoc  of  human  calculations.  It  was  an  ancient 
wise  man  who  said  he  that  observeth  the  wind  shall  not  sow. 
The  futility  of  human  science  and  resource  in  the  face  of 
nature  still  declares  itself  in  the  words  of  another  venerable 
sage  who  says  "they  who  plow  the  sea  do  not  carry  the  winds 
in  their  hands."  By  land  or  water  the  wind  roams  free  and 
furnishes  every  freedom-loving  soul  of  earth  the  crowning 
simile  for  his  dream  or  song. 

"I  must  have  liberty  withal,  as  large  a  charter  as  the 
wind,"  cries  the  awakened  mortal  in  the  green  forest  of  Ar- 
den,  and  the  specified  privilege  "to  blow  on  whom  I  please" 
is  one  much  coveted  no  doubt  by  other  than  Arden  dream- 
ers. To  "go  the  wind's  way,"  to  be  "free  as  the  wind  when 
the  heart  of  the  twilight  is  stirred"  is  an  impulse  known  to 
other  than  the  children  of  "vagabondia,"  though  a  majority 
of  earth's  children  are  fairly  content  if  the  kindly  wind  will 
but  come  their  way  in  some  free  and  generous  fashion.  The 
crowning  worth  of  it  in  all  human  life  and  enjoyment  can 
never  be  told,  but  may  be  strongly  guessed  by  what  the  want 
of  it  means  in  any  region  of  the  earth.  Stagnation  and 
death  settle  down  upon  any  spot  where  the  still  air  receives 
no  purifying  current  in  the  reviving  breeze.  The  scorching 
simoon,  or  the  raging  blizzard  are  more  merciful  than  the 
becalmed  sea  to  human  life,  and  the  ancient  poets  who 
claimed  fellowship  with  "brother  wind"  were  not  far  wrong 
in  the  relationship. 

206 


The  Salutary  Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  the  Winds    207 

It  is  not  alone  in  death  valleys  or  the  silent  sea  of  the 
Ancient  Mariner  that  the  life  ministry  of  the  wind  declares 
itself  by  its  absence.  Strike  camp  in  the  southwestern 
portion  of  the  Lone  Star  State  for  instance  when  summer 
suns  burn  hot  and  wait  for  the  gulf  breeze  to  find  you,  and 
"brother  wind"  will  claim  your  love  and  reverence  forever. 
"In  fact  "forty  thousand  brothers  with  all  their  quantity 
of  love"  could  not  make  up  the  sum  of  comfort  and  delight 
this  embracing  breeze  brings  with  it.  There  is  a  luxury  and 
friendliness  and  life  spell  in  it  that  verily  does  seem  to  give 
it  a  human  character  and  purpose  in  its  relation  to  men. 
It  even  seems  to  war  with  the  fiery  and  adverse  elements 
which  the  scorching  land  interposes.  It  is  a  curious  fea- 
ture of  the  air  currents  in  this  semitropic  region  that  they 
will  blow  hot  and  cold  almost  in  the  same  breath  and  even 
while  a  blast  as  from  a  red-hot  furnace  touches  your  brow, 
a  cooling  wave  sweeps  over  it  and  claims  the  life  victory. 
It  is  night,  however,  that  perfects  its  reign.  All  the  fiery 
cohorts  of  flaming  day  withdraw  when  the  "hindmost  wheels 
of  Phoebus'  wain"  sink  over  the  western  horizon  and  leave  the 
grateful  earth  to  the  ministry  of  winds  and  waves  that  never 
slumber. 

Sweeter  than  the  murmur  "of  doves  in  immemorial  elms" 
is  the  soft  play  of  the  breeze  through  the  feathery  boughs 
of  the  mesquite  trees  that  abound  in  this  region.  The 
rhythm  of  it,  in  the  heart  of  such  a  forest,  is  soft  and  regular 
and  soothing  as  the  plash  of  the  waves  upon  some  sea-washed 
shore.  Indeed,  so  like  the  murmur  of  waters  is  it  that  some 
call  of  the  "deep  entreating  sea"  seems  ever  sounding 
through  it,  yet  with  a  tone  so  soft  that  no  dream  is  lost  in 
its  bosom.  Nights  that  would  be  unendurable,  days  that 
would  savor  of  Gehenna,  are  thus  made  glorious  by  what 
men  call  the  "vagrant  winds,"  and  beyond  all  of  nature's 


208    The  Salutary  Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  the  Winds 

forces  commit  to  the  fitful  and  elusive  things  of  time — some- 
times even  the  most  malign  agencies  in  time's  path.  Indeed, 
all  powers  of  good  or  evil,  love  or  hate,  are  commonly  sym- 
bolized by  them.  From  spirit  birth  to  withering  death  writ- 
ers, sacred  and  profane,  make  the  winds  their  interpreters. 
As  the  wind  that  bloweth  where  it  listeth  and  ye  can  not 
tell  whence  it  cometh  and  whither  it  goeth,  so  is  every  one 
that  is  born  of  the  spirit,  says  the  sacred  word,  in  one 
strain,  and  in  another  pictures  man  as  a  flower  of  the  field, 
that  "the  wind  passeth  over  and  it  is  gone."  The  poets  in 
their  own  strong  way  repeat  the  opposing  measures : 

Swift  wind  of  God 
Quickening  the  clod, 
Give  of  the  heavens  strong 
My  heart  a  song, 

writes  one,  and  another  cries  bitterly: 

O  summer,  weep  to  see  the  havoc  done 

By  cruel  winds  that  hate  thy  benison, 

Beauty,  and  innocence,  and  hope,  are  slain. 

Something  that  hateth  God's  fair  universe 

Hath  set   on   summer's  brow  the  winter  of  its  curse. 

Thus  in  his  blindness  and  his  joy  or  sorrow  man  hunts 
his  God  in  the  winds,  and,  from  red  man  to  white  man,  finds 
him  benevolent  or  malevolent,  much  as  the  winds  blow  fierce 
or  gentle.  That  any  God  of  his  worship  rides  in  the  whirl- 
wind the  best  of  saints  rather  shudder  to  believe,  and  an 
angry  Pan  "stamping  his  hoof  in  the  night  thicket"  still 
lingers  in  the  minds  of  many  who  inquire  too  curiously 
whence  the  wind  cometh  that  makes  cities  crumble  and  man 
perish  like  a  flower  in  its  path.  Neither  science  nor  theol- 
ogy can  master  the  problem  of  the  winds,  and  to  give  them 


The  Salutary  Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  the  Winds    209 

over  to  art  and  the  common  pathway  they  are  graciously 
disposed  to  travel  is  no  doubt  the  better  part  of  that  wis- 
dom that  is  humble  that  it  knows  no  more.  At  any  rate  it 
is  here  emphaticall}^  that  "the  troubled  and  uncertain  ele- 
ment" in  which  we  dwell  calls,  as  Stevenson  noted,  for  some- 
thing that  reason  can  not  satisfy  and  art  and  human  ex- 
perience can  turn  to  the  best  use.  The  poet  knows  this 
who  says: 

Wind,  breathe  thine  art 
Upon  my  heart; 

Blow  the  wild  sweet  in, 
Let  my  song  begin. 

What  the  winds  bring  to  quicken  both  soul  and  body  is 
of  more  interest  to  the  children  of  earth  than  any  knowledge 
of  whence  they  come  or  whither  they  go.  They  have  strains 
for  all  moods,  and  what  they  bring  depends  on  what  they 
find,  somewhat  as  IngersoU  noted  when  he  said:  "Stand  by 
the  seashore,  and  what  its  wind-swept  waves  say  to  you  will 
depend  on  what  you  are  and  what  you  have  suffered."  Yet 
in  this  "rhythm  of  land  and  sea"  sounds  forever,  as  in  the 
quiring  stars,  that  liarmony  that  is  in  immortal  souls,  and 
more  closely  than  the  stars  it  brings  the  appeal  home  to 
man. 

It  is  no  idle  fancy  of  a  local  enthusiast  which  connects 
what  he  calls  "the  variety  of  sunny  South  Texas"  with  the 
soft  gulf  breezes  that  sweep  over  the  wide  plains  and  breathe 
in  very  truth  the  rhythm  of  both  land  and  sea  into  human 
hearts  and  lives.  "In  this  'land  of  heart's  delight,' "  he 
says,  "I  have  the  feeling  of  being  in  an  atmosphere  of  so- 
cial sanity,"  and  he  calls  to  the  nerve-racked  denizens  of  the 
turbulent  cities  to  flee  from  their  discordant  world  into  this 
wind-swept  realm  of  happiness  and  harmony.  It  is  verily 
the  wind's  call  turned  to  place  and  people  as  the  wind  knows 


210    The  Salutary  Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  the  Winds 

how.  Secret  and  variable  as  are  all  its  ways,  it  has  a  subtle 
power  of  adapting  itself  to  all  the  varied  phases  of  human 
life  and  surrounding.  Out  of  the  north  cometh  the  whirl- 
wind, says  the  Good  Book,  and  though  fortunately  Brother 
Wind  does  not  always  present  himself  in  quite  such  stirring 
fashion  to  the  Northern  man,  yet  he  has  a  breezy  note  that 
fits  the  sturdy  Northern  nature  better  than  the  soft  strains 
of  the  South.  This  Swinburne  recognizes.  Winds  from 
the  north  and  the  south  came  to  the  making  of  man,  he 
tells  us.  "They  breathed  upon  his  mouth;  they  filled  his 
body  with  life."  Surely,  too,  they  left  their  spell  upon  him, 
for  while  the  sharp  breeze  of  the  North  is  life  and  joy  to  the 
children  of  the  North,  for  natures  "sloping  to  the  South- 
ern side"  the  languorous  airs  and  balmy  zephyrs  that  come 
from  sun-kissed  gulfs  and  tropic  seas  bring  truer  bene- 
dictions. 

Out  of  his  very  joys  and  pains  man  plays  into  this  spirit 
of  the  winds.  Hurt  souls  seek  ever,  like  the  heart-sore  King 
Arthur,  some  "island  valley  of  Avalon  where  never  wind 
blows  coldly,"  while  to  the  strong  and  heartwhole  rings 
cheeriest  the  Zincale  cry,  "There's  a  wind  on  the  heath, 
brother,  there's  a  wind  on  the  heath,"  and  tramping  the 
great  North  road  seems  the  crowning  bliss  of  being.  That 
"joy  of  movement  free,"  which  one  poet  notes  makes  man  kin- 
dred to  the  winds  and  to  the  sea,  is  strongest,  no  doubt,  in 
strongest  lives  and  natures,  where  health  of  both  body  and 
mind  reigns  unshaken.  Breathing  the  North  winds,  defy- 
ing the  blizzard,  "wantoning  with  the  breakers"  has  a  fas- 
cination for  healthy  and  adventurous  mortals.  It  is,  as 
Stevenson  observes,  the  pampered  and  enervated  children 
of  hot  house  airs  and  luxuries  who  cower  behind  walls  and 
sealed  windows  when  the  wind  roars  its  challenge  to  the 
strong.     "Shrilly  sound  Pan's  pipes ;  and  behold,  the  banker 


The  Salutary  Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  the  Winds    211 

instantly  concealed  in  the  bank  parlor!"  he  exclaims,  and 
no  doubt  the  ecstasies  as  perchance  some  of  the  agonies  of 
life  are  missed  thereby. 

Certainly  the  sum  of  human  experience  is  sensibly  dimin- 
ished by  any  feeble  or  midway  course  or  custom  which  re- 
fuses to  take  the  rough  with  the  smooth,  the  terror  with  the 
delight,  which  the  winds  of  heaven  and  the  winds  of  destiny 
have  brought  to  the  making  of  life  on  this  earthly  planet. 
Fortunately,  the  homely  old  adage  which  declares  it  an  ill 
wind  that  blows  nobody  any  good  favors  a  gracious  ac- 
ceptance of  the  wind's  way,  even  where  least  desired,  and 
though  it  may  be  mixed  up  with  all  man's  moods  and  im- 
pulses, it  curiously  escapes  connection  with  his  evil  tempers 
and  arraignments  of  fate  in  finer  spirits.  Shakespeare  gives 
a  true  expression  of  this  when  he  makes  the  houseless  King 
Lear,  exposed  to  the  raging  blasts  of  winter,  murmur  sadly, 
"Blow,  winds !  rage !  blow !  I  tax  not  you,  you  elements,  with 
unkindness."  And  again  in  the  familiar  lines  in  "As  You 
Like  It": 

Blow,  blow,  thou  winter  wind, 
Thou  art  not  so  unkind 
As  man's  ingratitude. 

The  sentiment,  if  not  the  strain,  is  caught  by  a  modern 
writer  who  said  of  a  Turkish  outbreak,  "A  whirlwind  or 
earthquake  is  found  to  be  kind,  gentle  and  soothing  com- 
pared with  a  Moslem."  The  poet  who  in  her  recent  song 
imputes  the  nature  of  human  hate  to  the  raging  winds  strikes 
a  different  note  from  the  majority  of  earth's  singers.  In 
measures  grave  or  gay  they  follow  the  wind's  free  way  be- 
yond the  narrow  bounds  of  the  moralities,  with  their  weary 
burden  of  good  and  evil,  love  and  hate.  But  it  is  Henry 
Borrow  who  really  chases  it  down  to  its  true  place  in  the 


212    The  Salutary  Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  the  Wmds 

world  of  nature  and  life.     And  so  we  come  back  to  the  great 
North  road  and  the  gypsy's  song : 

There's  night  and  day,  brother, 

Both  sweet  things; 
There's  sun,  moon  and  stars,  brother — 

All  sweet  things. 
There's  a  wind  on  the  heath,  brother, 

A  wind  on  the  heath. 
And  just  to  hear  that  I  would 

Gladly  live  forever. 


THE  SECRETS  OF  NATURE  AS  REVEALED  BY 
THE  NIGHT 

NOT  the  least  of  the  boons  the  summer  holds  for  man 
is  acquaintance  with  the  night.  A  "dead,  monotonous 
period"  to  people  "who  cower  under  roofs"  during  much  of 
the  year,  night  becomes  the  hour  of  luxurious  comfort, 
beauty  and  infinite  outreaches  of  being  when  summer  opens 
her  starry  realms  of  endless  space,  and  quietude,  and  gran- 
deur, to  mortal  sense  and  sight.  Most  any  of  earth's  chil- 
dren feel  the  great  thoughts  of  space  and  eternity  in  the 
majestic  hour  somewhat  as  Walt  Whitman  did  when  he  ex- 
claimed in  his  night  watch  on  the  prairie,  "How  plenteous! 
how  spiritual.  I  was  thinking  the  day  most  splendid  till 
I  saw  what  the  not  day  exhibited.  I  was  thinking  this 
globe  enough  till  there  sprang  out  so  noiseless  around  me, 
myriads  of  other  globes." 

But  even  for  those  whose  thoughts  and  feelings  stray  no 
farther  than  their  own  hushed  little  globe,  summer  night's 
peace  and  loveliness  enfolds  them  like  a  spell.  Shapes  and 
moving  shadows  take  on  the  enchantment  of  a  new  and  airy 
world  which  Shakespeare  himself  could  scarcely  portray. 
The  commonest  domestic  animal  moves  like  a  milk  white 
doe  through  rustling  branches  or  thickets  and  the  veriest 
freak  in  human  form  may  claim  the  poet's  benediction: 
"Bless  thee  bottom;  bless  thee!  thou  art  translated."  The 
waking  senses  feel  no  need  of  slumber  for  any  perfection  of 
rest,  or  if  perchance  "an  exposition  of  sleep"  comes  over 
them,  the  dream  it  induces  is  "past  the  wit  of  man  to  report," 

213 


214    The  Secrets  of  Nature  as  Revealed  by  the  Night 

so  subtly  is  it  mixed  with  all  the  mystic  influences  in  na- 
ture's outdoor  world.  The  summer  world  which  at  last 
has  wooed  men  from  fashionable  hotels  and  country  palaces 
into  fields  and  forests,  where  "God  keeps  open  house"  is  re- 
storing a  long  lost  wealth  of  beauty  and  strength  that  the 
children  of  the  morning  knew  in  their  open  tents,  and  their 
mossy  pillows,  and  their  altar  stairs  of  worship  which,  like 
Jacob's  ladder,  climbed  nightly  to  the  stars. 

The  span  of  life  which  stretched  on  into  the  centuries 
may  well  connect  itself  with  this  tent  and  outdoor  life  of 
patriarch  and  Arab.  It  is  certain  that  the  civilized  life 
that  shut  man  away  from  nature's  closest  ministry  began  at 
once  to  shorten  his  days  and  rob  his  nights  of  their  life-giv- 
ing power.  For,  as  Stevenson  says,  "what  seems,"  aye 
what  is  "a  kind  of  temporal  death  to  people  choked  between 
walls  and  curtains  is  only  a  light  and  living  slumber  to  the 
man  who  sleeps  afield.  All  night  long  he  can  hear  nature 
breathing  deeply  and  freely  and  even  as  she  takes  her  rest 
she  turns  and  smiles,  and  there  is  one  stirring  hour  unknown 
to  those  who  dwell  in  houses  when  a  wakeful  life  influence 
goes  abroad  over  the  sleeping  hemisphere  which  all  outdoor 
creatures  feel."  It  is  then,  he  says,  that  "men  who  have 
lain  down  with  the  fowls  open  their  dim  eyes  and  behold  the 
beauty  of  the  night."  It  is  then  that  they  share  some  life 
thrill  of  mother  earth  below  their  resting  bodies.  It  is  a 
"nightly  resurrection"  wrapped  in  the  deep  mysteries  of 
nature  which  "even  shepherds  and  old  country  folk  best 
read  in  these  arcana  can  not  fathom."  Yet  any  child  of 
earth  may  share  it  with  all  outdoor  creatures  if,  wooed  by 
the  summer  night,  he  will  leave  his  stifling  walls  and  cur- 
tains and  lie  down  in  the  open  starlight  and  become  "for  the 
time  being  a  sheep  of  nature's  flock.'*  It  seems  to  be  a 
part  of  nature's  generous  off^erings  that  they  are  freest  to 


The  Secrets  of  Nature  as  Revealed  by  the  Night    215 

the   humblest   and,  as   the   student   of  her   night   gifts   and 
glories  declares  in  "Love's  Labour  Lost," 

Those  earthly  godfathers  of  heaven's  lights, 

That  give  a  name  to  every  fixed  star. 
Have  no  more  profit  of  their  shining  nights 

Than  those  that  walk  and  wot  not  what  they  are. 

It  is  true  enough  of  life's  rarest  offerings  that  ofttimes 
"Light  seeking  light  doth  light  of  light  beguile,"  and  to  let 
"soft  stillness  and  the  night  become  the  touches  of  sweet  har- 
mony" in  troubled  breasts,  without  asking  how  or  why  is  the 
true  Arden  philosophy  which  the  "fool  in  the  forest"  under- 
stands perchance  better  than  the  sage.  The  sound  which 
is  back  of  silence  in  all  creation's  bounds  stirs  in  the  pulse 
of  night  as  if  a  myriad  insect  throats  and  whirring  wings 
were  striving  to  keep  tune  with  the  very  music  of  the  spheres. 
Every  leaf  and  blade  is  alive  with  these  tiny  choristers, 
bringing  to  the  soft  night,  freed  from  the  din  of  garish  day, 
touches  of  sweet  harmony  that  only  those  who  go  out  into 
the  bosom  of  night  can  ever  know.  The  wonder  of  it  breaks 
like  a  revelation  from  the  unseen  upon  the  unaccustomed 
ear,  nor  can  any  amount  of  familiarity  destroy  the  spell  of 
the  universal  and  the  invisible  which  throbs  in  undertones 
to  the  music  of  the  world.  What  gifts  of  grace  attend  the 
tremulous  strains  for  mortal  beings  Wordsworth  noted  well 
when  he  said  of  nature's  sweest  child: 

"The  stars  of  midnight  shall  be  dear  to  her." 
"And  beauty  born  of  murmuring  sound  shall  pass  into 
her  face." 

It  is  not  sleep  alone  that  acts  as  nature's  sweet  restorer 
in  the  stilly  night.  Sleep  indeed  is  like  a  feverish  night- 
mare without  the  soothing  influence  which  wind  and  open 


216    The  Secrets  of  Nature  as  Revealed  by  the  Night 

sky  can  bring  to  refresh  the  sleeper.  And  for  those  trou- 
bled moments  when,  as  by  some  mystic  summons,  or  strange 
unrest,  the  eyes  flash  open  to  ti.e  night,  what  in  the  most 
luxurious  chamber  can  meet  their  gaze  with  the  soothing 
spell  of  the  calm,  kindly  stars  and  all  the  "serene  of  heaven." 
Stevenson  tells  the  story  in  his  picture  of  night  in  the  open. 
"This  sudden  awakening,"  he  says,  "comes  as  a  pleasant  in-< 
cident.  We  are  disturbed  in  our  slumber  only  that  we  may 
the  better  and  more  sensibly  relish  it.  We  have  a  moment 
to  look  upon  the  stars,  and  there  is  a  special  pleasure  in 
feeling  that  we  share  the  impulses  with  all  outdoor  creatures 
in  some  quickening  thrill  of  Mother  Earth."  He  declares 
that  he  "thought  with  horror"  of  inns  and  houses,  of  "con- 
grega;ted  nightcaps,  and  the  nocturnal  prowess  of  clerks  and 
students,  of  hot  theaters  and  pass  keys  and  close  rooms." 
It  is  thus  that  a  few  nights  in  the  open  will  liberate  man 
from  the  whole  burden  of  his  costly  civilization  and  give  him 
the  "serene  possession  of  himself"  that  heaven  designed  for 
him  and  society  has  been  stealing  away  from  him  for  many 
generations. 

Life,  which  moves  in  a  circle,  seems  slowly  bringing  men 
back  to  the  open-air  chamber  from  which  the  sons  of  the 
morning  drew  their  strength  and  inspiration.  Screened 
porches,  roofless  galleries,  tents  and  outdoor  cots  furnish 
sleeping  quarters  for  a  large  portion  of  the  population  in 
certain  sections  of  the  country,  while  camp  life  has  claimed 
hundreds  of  those  who  once  stifled  themselves  at  inn  and 
summer  boarding  place,  where  congregated  night  caps  and 
clerks  of  startling  nocturnal  prowess  profaned  nature's 
sanctuaries  of  rest.  The  war  upon  tuberculosis  and  other 
diseases  has  added  to  the  open-air  movement  in  the  life- 
saving  resources  of  the  race.  Nevertheless,  while  many  have 
sought  the  crowning  wealth  in  nature's  store,  "yet  still,'^ 


I 


The  Secrets  of  Nature  as  Revealed  by  the  Night    217 

as  the  old  hymn  has  it,  "there's  room  for  millions  more," 
and  when  the  dog  star  reigns  in  the  sky  the  call  of  the  night 
is  emphasized  by  nature  herself  in  the  discomfort  she  drops 
down  from  her  flaming  suns  upon  the  day.  It  is  almost  as 
if  she  would  drive  poor,  plodding,  unobservant  mortals  out 
into  the  realms  of  night  to  find  the  joy  of  being  no  day  can 
unfold  to  tliem.  "I  have  found  I  had  discovered  a  new 
pleasure  for  myself,"  said  Stevenson  of  his  night  in  the  open, 
and  although  he  leaves  his  reader  to  guess  what  that  pleas- 
ure was,  he  had  no  hesitancy  in  declaring  that  through  it 
was  opened  to  him  the  life  that  is  "the  most  complete  and 
free." 

But  the  half  of  life  is  known  to  one  who  reads  its  mean- 
ing only  by  day.  '*And  who,  and  who,  are  the  travelers?" 
asks  the  poet,  that  cover  time's  stages  in  the  king's  highway. 
"They  are  night  and  day  and  day  and  night."  Why  slight 
one  of  these  "ancient  cavaliers"  because  he  walks  in  shadow  .'^ 
Burning  midnight  oil  to  him  when  he  lias  stars  for  tapers  is 
a  poor  human  policy  whereby  even  the  wise  have  no  doubt 
hurt  his  guiding  power  to  wandering  men.  It  may  be  that 
"Man-Afraid-of-the-Dark,"  as  the  children  of  nature  re- 
gard the  white  brother  who  "cowers  into  his  house"  at  night- 
time, has  deprived  night  of  some  of  its  celestial  ministries 
and  raised  up  ghouls  and  goblins  in  its  path  that  timorous 
mortals  may  have  trouble  to  lay.  Even  the  star-souled 
Milton  declared  that  "when  night  darkens  the  streets,  then 
wander  forth  the  sons  of  Belial,  flown  with  insolence  and 
wine,"  thus  turning  his  eyes  upon  the  evil  and  not  the  hal- 
lowed train  that  move  in  the  path  of  night.  But  over  all 
man's  fears  or  visions  comes  that  strain  of  the  heavenly 
host  which  chose  "the  listening  ear  of  night"  for  the  sublim- 
'^st  message  ever  conveyed  to  mortal  man. 


SI  8    The  Secrets  of  Nature  as  Revealed  by  the  Night 

"It  came  upon  the  midnight   clear 
That  glorious  song  of  old" 

and  through  "the  dead  vast  and  middle  of  the  night"  it  still 
rings  out  the  promise  of  peace  and  good-will  to  men  as  no 
hour  of  noisy  day  can  repeat  it. 


THE  CHARM  OF  THE  SOUTH  TO  THE  NORTHERN 

VISITOR 

PLACES,  like  people,  have  a  genius  of  their  own.  Geo- 
graphical lines  are  not  all  that  mark  localities,  nor  can 
the  ablest  of  the  writers  define  the  special  or  controlling 
spell  of  different  sections  even  of  the  same  land.  Innumer- 
able and  eloquent  efforts  have  been  made  to  convey  to  the 
Northern  man  the  charm  of  the  South.  To  one  who  has 
never  crossed  the  mystic  border  line  the  efforts  are  vain. 
Nature  holds  the  secret  in  lier  own  keeping.  Her  fine  en- 
chantments are  for  those  who  seek  them  on  her  own  ground. 
They  may  come,  as  one  poet  perceives,  with  a  "shock  of 
wonder  and  delight  in  which  the  traveler  learns  that  he  has 
passed  the  indefinable  line  that  separates  South  from  North." 
"A  color,  a  flower,  a  scent"  may  bring  this  delicious  con- 
sciousness, or  it  may  not  break  upon  him  until  "one  fine 
morning  he  wakes  up  with  the  Southern  sunshine  peeping 
through  the  persiennes  and  the  Southern  patois  confusedly 
audible  below  his  windows."  But  whenever  or  however  it 
comes  it  will  not  be  like  anything  he  has  found  in  books  or 
could  have  laid  hold  of  in  any  day,  but  from  present  con- 
sciousness. The  best  his  pleasant  Southern  tourist  books 
may  have  done  for  him  is  to  make  him  "prick  up  his  ears" 
at  the  enthusiasm  in  the  very  name  of  the  South  and  be- 
come as  anxious  to  seek  out  beauties  and  get  by  heart  the 
lines  and  characters  of  the  place,  as  if  he  had  been  told  that 
it  was  all  his  own. 

Yet,  after  all,  it  is  not  the  books,  but  the  conformation 

219 


220       Charm  of  tlie  South  to  the  Northern  Visitor 

of  his  own  feelings  which  makes  this  magic  sense  of  pos- 
session lay  hold  of  him.  For  whether  it  be  the  wide,  free 
welcome  of  the  Southern  sunshine,  or  the  generous  open 
kindliness  of  the  warm  Southern  heart,  there  is  a  sweet  sense 
of  coming  into  his  own  which  the  traveler  experiences  under 
Southern  skies,  as  nowhere  else  in  his  wandering.  It  is  as 
Stevenson  says,  though  only  experience  can  confirm  it,  "even 
those  who  have  never  been  there  before  feel  as  if  they  had 
been,  and  every  one  goes  comparing  and  seeking  for  the 
familiar  and  finding  it  with  such  ecstasies  of  recognition, 
that  one  would  think  they  were  coming  home  after  a  weary 
absence." 

It  is  like  trying  to  define  the  indefinable,  however,  to  at- 
tempt to  explain  the  cause  of  all  the  compelling  sweetness 
that  lays  hold  of  one  in  the  Southern  world.  The  writers 
who  tell  us  that  atmosphere  is  the  charm  of  the  South  and 
give  it  up  at  that,  do  perhaps,  as  well  as  the  subtle  case 
allows,  although  it  is  a  little  like  saying  that  temperament 
is  the  gauge  of  the  individual  and  leaving  people  who  con- 
found it  with  tempers  to  make  what  they  will  out  of  it.  A 
people  subject  to  all  the  skyey  influences  its  citizens  may 
be  in  a  marked  degree,  for  whatever  else  may  be  said  of  the 
South,  it  is  a  region  where  you  can  never  leave  the  sky  out 
of  the  landscape,  nor  out  of  the  brains  and  ways  of  men. 

Perhaps  it  is  to  the  wide-awake  Northerner  that  the  un- 
paralleled wonders  of  the  Southern  sky  make  the  strongest 
appeal.  Its  ethereal  blue,  with  cloud  argosies  of  white  radi- 
ance floating  through  it  by  day,  draw  his  gaze  upward  in 
defiance  of  the  hottest  sun.  A  vision  of  the  sunset  opens  a 
realm  of  beauty  and  color  in  a  myriad  forms  and  tints  al- 
most too  bright,  indeed,  "for  spotted  man  to  intrude  upon 
without  novitiate  and  probation."  Sometimes  a  round  sil- 
very moon  breaks  in  upon  the  scene,  through  floating  waves 


I 


Charm  of  the  South  to  the  Northern  Visitor       221 


of  rose  or  early  stars  peep  through  soft  films  of  amber  with 
the  mystic  glow  and  spell  of  worlds  afar.  "There  are  al- 
ways sunsets,"  says  Emerson,  "but  it  depends  upon  the 
mood  of  the  man  whether  he  shall  see  them,"  and  the  North- 
ern man,  who  stands  entranced  before  the  Southern  sunset, 
must  naturally  wonder  what  is  the  mood  of  the  many  leisure- 
ly ones  that  pass  him,  in  park,  or  plaza,  or  country  byway, 
without  a  glance  at  the  transcendant  pageant  in  the  eve- 
ning sky.  The  charm  of  atmosphere  and  light  would  seem 
to  have  reached  a  climax  there,  and  all  the  community  of 
men  should  be  with  the  poet  who  says,  "We  leave  the  world 
of  politics  and  personalities  to  penetrate  bodily  this  incred- 
ible beauty;  we  dip  our  hands  in  this  painted  element  and 
bathe  our  eyes  in  these  lights  and  forms." 

If  it  is  true  that  the  hues  of  sunset  make  life  great,  the 
greatest  style  of  heroes  should  be  born  under  Southern  skies. 
Here  certainly,  too,  the  stars  "rain  down  an  influence"  that 
should  lift  man  heavenward.  Is  there  elsewhere  to  be  found 
a  spot  where  they  shine  so  brightly  as  to  stretch  long  shad- 
ows of  tree  or  pillar  that  intercepts  their  rays.'*  The  Lone 
Star  State  reveals  such  spectacle  to  wondering  Northern 
eyes.  The  evening  star  blazes  forth  in  the  sky  with  a  radi- 
ance that  clearly  outlines  the  shadow  of  vine  or  pillar  on 
the  Southern  veranda,  and  has  led  some  Northern  eyes  to 
hunt  for  a  young  moon  to  explain  the  strange  eff^ect. 

Set  hours  and  iron  rules,  and  stern  edicts  of  powers  that 
be,  whereby  life  at  every  turn  is  controlled  at  the  North, 
fall  away  like  "rusty  mail  in  monumental  mockery,"  when 
once  the  opulence  of  sunlight  or  the  breath  of  the  magnolia 
proclaims  that  the  land  of  Dixie  has  been  safely  reached, 
and  the  whole  problem  of  existence  is  what  "you  all"  would 
"like"  in  any  matter.  It  need  not  be  told,  that  "you  all" 
soon  fall  into  the  ways  of  "we  all"  and  grumble  not  at  all 


Charm  of  the  South  to  the  Northern  Visitor 

if  the  milk  man,  or  the  vegetable  man,  or  the  man  of  any 
trade  or  calling  that  serves  sordid  needs,  come  at  all  hours, 
or  no  hours,  very  much  as  the  fancy  takes  him.  There  are 
always  gardens  of  bloom,  and  beauty,  and  fragrance,  where 
my  lady  may  take  her  ease  while  servants  loiter,  and  "a 
beaker  full  of  the  warm  South,"  such  as  Keats  prayed  for, 
"with  dance  and  song  and  sunburnt  mirth"  to  refresh  every 
creature,  high  or  low. 

Occasionally  some  Northern  woman  refuses  to  fall  in  with 
the  domestic  spirit  of  the  place  and  even  upbraids  her  liege 
lord  for  taking  life  on  its  easy-going  lines.  But  in  the  end 
the  stars  or  melting  suns  "incline"  her  also  when  with  the 
Romans  (?)  to  do  as  the  Romans,  and  she  compromises  with 
her  past  by  telling  how  strange  and  lax  the  country's  ways 
seemed  to  her  when  she  first  came — and  thus  she  comes  un- 
der the  spell,  instead  of  under  the  yoke,  of  daily  life,  with 
its  sunrise  and  its  sunsets,  and  all  the  shifting  drama  be- 
tween sun  and  sun.  "It  costs  a  rare  combination  of  clouds, 
and  lights  to  overcome  the  common  and  poor,"  says  Emer- 
son, and  he  seems  to  be  in  touch  with  the  Southern  spirit 
when  he  adds,  "What  do  you  look  for  in  the  landscape,  in 
sunsets  and  sunrises  but  a  compensation  for  the  cramp  and 
pettiness  of  human  performances."  "The  strenuous  life,"  the 
mania  for  doing  things,  unquestionably  pales  unde  tropical 
skies;  but  in  the  rare  combination  of  clouds  and  lights, 
nature  truly  makes  compensations  that  beings  of  power  and 
fancy  to  accept  her  aid,  and  follow  her  flights,  can  turn  to 
better  account  than  anything  which  the  work-a-day  world 
can  offer.  "An  armory  of  powers"  she  may  indeed  offer 
to  the  man  of  science  who  would  "harness  bird,  beast  and  in- 
sect to  his  work," 

Prove  the  virtues  of  each  bed  of  rock, 
And,  like  the  chemist  with  his  loaded  jars. 


Charm  of  the  South  to  the  Northern  Visitor       223 

Draw  from  each  stratum  its  adapted  use 
To  drug  his  crops  or  weaken  his  arts  withal. 

Yet  it  remains  true  that  "nature  serves  us  best  when  in 
her  rarest  beauty  she  speaks  to  the  imagination  and  we  feel 
that  the  huge  heaven  and  earth  are  but  a  web  drawn  around 
us  and  that  the  light,  the  skies  and  the  mountains  are  but 
the  painted  vicissitudes  of  the  soul."  *Some  of  the  Southern 
writers,  and  more  than  one  of  their  poets,  strike  such  a  note 
in  their  skj-caught  messages,  and  truly  he  has  missed  the 
truest  inspiration  of  the  land  who  has  not  felt  some  symbol 
or  kinship  of  the  soul  uniting  him  to  the  light,  the  skies  and 
all  the  web  of  beauty  drawn  about  him.  Like  Father  Tabb's 
sense  of  kinship  with  the  violet,  in  a  world  of  beauty  beyond 
all  worlds  of  utility,  the  ultimate  truth  of  being  comes  to 
the  soul  as  by  a  flash  of  heaven's  own  light  that  sets  it  free 
from  the  toilsome  ways  and  worries  of  homely  life  and  sor- 
did ends.  It  is  in  the  Southland  if  anywhere  that  men  will 
find  an  answer  to  the  long  yearning  cry, 

Has  it  a  meaning  after  all, 

Or  is  it  one  of  nature's  lies. 
That  net  of  beauty  that  she  casts 

Over  life's   unsuspecting  eyes.? 

Some  day,  somewhere,  when  weary,  toiling,  money-grab- 
bing men  find  time  to  bring  the  powers  within  them,  whether 
sharpened  under  northern  skies  or  fancy-fired  by  southern 
moons  and  sunsets,  into  perfect  touch  with  the  "majestic 
beauties  that  daily  wrap  us  in,"  they  will  surely  escape  the 
barriers  that  render  them  so  impotent  and  learn  for  them- 
selves what  "rainbows  teach  and  sunsets  show"  of  the  eternal 
laws  of  beauty,  truth  and  being,  which  are  one.  It  is 
"sophistication  and  the  second  thought,"  the  seers  and  psy- 


224       Charm  of  the  South  to  the  Northern  Visitor 

chologists  tell  us,  that  shuts  us  away  from  beauty's  power 
and  prevents  nature  from  entrancing  us.  Perhaps  this  is 
why  to  fresh  Northern  eyes  and  unsophisticated  souls  the 
all-embracing  beauty  of  the  semitropic  world  comes  with  an 
enchantment  that  the  old  resident  has  in  a  measure  lost. 
And  yet  the  love  of  the  Southerner  for  his  home  and  land 
is  something  which  befits  the  spell  that  nature  has  woven 
about  them.  It  is  not  so  strange  that  even  a  Northern 
statesman  should  have  chosen  "Dixie"  rather  than  "The 
Star-Spangled  Banner,"  "Hail  Columbia"  Xyr  any  other 
Northern  air  as  the  intensest  expression  of  patriotism  and 
the  love  of  one's  native  land  the  country  furnishes.  It 
seems  to  be  with  the  Southerner  as  Ingalls  said  of  the  Kan- 
san  in  olden  days.  "He  may  wander.  He  may  roam.  He 
may  travel.  He  may  go  elsewhere,  but  no  other  land  can 
claim  him  as  a  citizen.  As  the  'gray  and  melancholy  main' 
to  the  sailor,  the  desert  to  the  Bedouin,  the  Alps  to  the  moun- 
taineer," so  is  the  land  of  the  palm  tree  and  the  pomegran- 
ate, the  myrtle  and  the  magnolia  and  the  wide,  white  fields 
of  cotton  to  aU  its  children." 

It  rouses  an  allegiance  that  can  never  be  foresworn.  Un- 
consciously, too,  the  influences  of  earth  and  air  work 
changes  in  the  human  temper  and  outlook  that  the  North- 
ern man's  ready  characterization  of  all  life  as  "slow"  but 
dimly  fathoms.  It  is  from  an  old  Bengal  poet  that  a  clew 
may  be  found  to  the  better  meaning  in  the  climatic  influ- 
ences which  bear  upon  the  more  easy-going  life  of  the  South. 
Out  of  his  ancient  communion  with  "Mother  Earth,  Father 
Sky,  Brother  Wind,  Friend  Light  and  Sweetheart  Water" 
comes  the  simple  but  vital  truth  that  it  is  "in  the  power  of 
the  good  company  of  earth  and  sky,  of  wind,  and  light,  and 
water,  to  rid  man  of  the  fear  of  poverty."  This  haunting 
fear  which  drives  the  Northern  man  continually  along  his 


Charm  of  the  South  to  tJie  Northern  Visitor       225 

hustling  way  seems  verily  to  have  lost  its  power  in  the  good 
company  of  his  beautiful  earth,  and  sky,  and  light,  with  the 
Southern  man.  There  is  even  a  picturesque  side  to  such 
poverty  as  may  exist  that  fits  into  the  landscape  and  makes 
it  seem  less  squalid  than  under  Northern  skies.  As  Steven- 
son noted  in  the  group  of  washerwomen  relieved  against  the 
blue  sky,  some  harmony  of  color  is  characteristic  of  the 
Southern  garb,  even  when  reduced  to  the  scant  lines  of  pov- 
erty. But,  last  of  all,  is  the  liberation  of  spirit  which  sim- 
plicity of  wants  brings  to  children  of  nature  and  the  open 
air.  And  it  takes  the  soft  Southern  skies  to  perfect  that 
life.  And  as  to  the  general  activities  and  enterprises  that 
enter  into  the  little  span  of  human  life,  why  not  accept  the 
saving  principle,  born  perchance  of  those  skies,  that  noth- 
ing need  be  done  in  a  hurry  that  can  possibly  be  done  slowly 
or  even  left  undone. 


THE  END  AND  ENDS  OF  LIFE 

TO  be  famous  and  to  be  loved  were  the  modest  boons  the 
great  Balzac  asked  of  life.  Both  were  granted  him. 
Yet  he  died  in  bitter  sorrow,  pleading  with  his  doctor  for 
even  six  hours  more  of  life.  Fame  had  reached  its  brilliant 
culmination,  love's  long  passion  was  crowned  by  marriage, 
the  heavy  burden  of  debt  was  lifted  and  the  golden  hour  for 
the  indulgence  of  his  splendid  genius  just  at  hand  when 
death  dropped  the  curtain  and  tore  him  from  all  that  was 
dear  in  life.  Is  it  strange  that  he  found  it  hard  to  go  and 
leave  so  much  beneath  the  friendly  summer  sun.?  Would  it 
have  been  easier  to  loose  his  hold  when  clouds  lowered,  life's 
struggle  seemed  vain,  and  its  burdens  too  heavy  to  be  borne? 

It  is  for  mortal  man  at  his  best  estate  to  say,  for  the 
majority  of  great  men  go  out  by  one  or  the  other  of  these 
doors.  To  build  the  house  beautiful  and  abide  in  it,  to  reach 
the  mountain  top  and  enjoy  its  star-charmed  freedom  and 
repose,  is  given  to  the  merest  fraction  of  the  human  race. 

Yet  death  is  so  busy  with  great  and  low  alike  in  these 
latter  days  that  its  relation  to  life  may  well  arouse  fresh 
thought  and  questioning  in  human  breasts.  And  surely  the 
man  who  can  see  his  earthly  hopes  and  desires  realized  even 
for  one  brief,  hour  of  the  golden  day,  would  seem  more  ready 
to  say  with  Stevenson,  "Glad  did  I  live  and  gladly  die" 
than  he  who  must  yield  up  this  earthly  chance  with  all  the 
longings  of  his  soul  unsatisfied.  It  may  be  that  to  the  ma- 
jority of  earth's  children  the  kindliest  feature  of  the  stern 
summons  is  in  the  poet's  whisper, 

226 


The  End  and  Ends  of  Life  2^7 

"Death  comes  to  set  thee  free, 
Oh,  meet  him  cheerily, 
And  all  thy  fears  shall  cease 
And  ,in   eternal  peace 
Thy  sorrows  end." 

But  this  is  not  the  happiest,  the  bravest,  nor  the  truest  note 
in  mortal  pathways.  Not  "eternal  peace,"  not  dreamless 
sleep,  but  the  life  more  abundant  is  what  strong  souls  de- 
sire and  the  achievement  of  life's  ends  in  one  stage  of  being 
is  the  best  pledge  of  their  achievement  in  another.  By  the 
very  logic  of  existence  it  must  be  a  sorrow  and  a  loss  to  die 
with  one  true  end  of  human  life  and  joy  unrealized.  A  man 
must  win  a  man's  joy  here  or  nowhere,  and  there  is  a  pathos 
unmeasured  in  the  face  of  the  countless  lives  that  miss  it — 
a  crime  unmeasured  in  the  social  wrongs  and  lunacies  that 
conspire  to  frustrate  it.  Yet  the  crowning  madness  lies  in 
the  spiritless  manner  in  which  ordinary  mortals  yield  up 
their  birthright  of  joy  at  the  behest  of  a  blind  and  sordid 
world  with  all  "its  sickly  forms  that  err  from  honest  na- 
ture's rule." 

"Let  a  man  contend  to  his  uttermost  for  his  life's  set 
prize  be  it  what  it  will,"  is  the  charge  of  a  wise  philosopher 
as  well  as  a  Christian  poet.  And  the  future  doom  of  those 
who  fail  in  this  is  told  in  the  flaming  lines, 

"They  see  not  God  I  know, 

Nor  all  that  cliivalry  of  His, 

The  soldier  saints,  who  row  on  row. 

Burn  upward  to  their  point  of  bliss, 

Since  the  end  of  life  being  manifest, 

They  had  burned  their  way   through   the  world   to   this." 

The  pity  of  it  is,  though  perhaps  too,  the  glory,  that 
men  must  burn  their  way  through  the  stupid  and  jealous 


228  The  End  and  Ends  of  Life 

world  to  most  any  point  of  bliss  marked  out  for  themselves. 
And  as  Browning  held  with  Drummond  that  love  is  the  great- 
est thing  in  the  world  it  is  there  that  he  fixes  the  prize  most 
to  be  sought  by  those  who  would  mount  upward  in  the 
path  of  being.  As  one  of  his  best  commentators  notes, 
"For  Browning  love  both  symbolizes  and  arouses  that  thirst 
for  the  Infinite  which  is  the  primary  need  of  humanity." 
And  this  claim  is  dimly  confirmed  in  that  ideal  of  purity 
and  goodness  which  even  the  most  commonplace  lovers  seek 
in  each  other.  Yet  nothing  is  so  beset  with  difficulties, 
wrongs,  and  base  suspicions,  as  love,  and  to  "burn  their 
way"  through  an  uncomprehending  world  to  it,  has  been 
the  need  of  nearly  all  the  famous  lovers  of  history.  As- 
suredly in  studying  the  relations  of  life  and  death  the  nature 
of  one's  controlling  affection  is  of  all  importance.  For  it 
is  love  that  alone  can  conquer  death  and  give  the  crowning 
evidence  of  immortality.  All  human  history  bears  testi- 
mony to  the  divine  truth  that — "love,  pure  and  true,  is  to 
the  soul  the  sweet  immortal  dew,  that  gems  life's  petals  in 
its  hour  of  dusk," 

"If  you  would  make  out  the  tangled  map  of  life,"  said  a 
great  preacher,  "let  love  teach  you,"  and  surely  if  you 
would  master  the  pass  of  death  love  must  point  the  way. 
For  "life  is  God  and  God  is  love,"  and  nothing  but  his  own 
weak  surrender  of  his  birthright  can  separate  man  from 
that  life  in  love.  The  "unlit  lamp  and  the  ungirt  loin"  is 
the  ground  of  loss  here  as  elsewhere:  What  adverse  fate 
and  outside  foes  may  wrest  from  the  soul's  desires  here  is 
sure  to  be  regained  hereafter.  "There  shall  never  be  one 
lost  good.  What  was  shall  live  as  before,"  and  in  the  faith 
of  that  one  may  smile  at  the  utmost  that  "envious  and 
calumniating  time"  can  do  to  rob  the  good  and  true  of  their 
ultimate  and  happy  ends.     Without   this  faith  all  human 


The  End  and  Ends  of  Life 


n9 


life  is  a  mockery  and  a  tragedy,  in  the  face  of  death.  From 
the  physical  standpoint  no  truer  picture  was  ever  drawn 
of  it  than  Ingersoll  offered  at  his  brother's  grave,  when  he 
said:  "Whether  in  mid  sea  or  among  the  breakers  of  the 
farther  shore  a  wreck  must  mark  at  last  the  end  of  each 
and  all.  Every  life,  no  matter  if  its  every  hour  is  jeweled 
Mrith  a  joy,  will,  at  its  close,  become  a  tragedy  as  sad,  and 
deep,  and  dark,  as  can  be  woven  of  the  warp  and  woof  of 
mystery  and  death." 

"Silence  and  pathetic  dust"  are  indeed  all  that  mortal 
man  can  see  in  his  end  save  as  the  immortal  spirit  asserts 
its  union  with  the  eternal  goodness,  the  everlasting  love. 


TWIN  STARS  IN  LOVE'S  FIRMAMENT 

TRULY,  the  poetry  of  earth  is  never  dead.  The  "Vita 
Nuova"  is  still  the  love  poem  of  the  ages.  Its  appeal 
is  as  direct  and  vital  to  the  lovers  of  today  as  when  the 
youthful  Dante  inscribed  it  to  the  fair  Lady  Beatrice 
through  the  mists  of  medieval  thought  and  theology.  It 
is  interesting  indeed,  to  find  recently  a  theological  journal 
bringing  home  this  appeal  to  the  men  of  our  troubled  hour, 
and  casting  the  immortal  role  of  the  great  Bard  mainly  in 
the  realm  of  immortal  love.  For  it  is  as  a  disciple  of  love 
that  the  writer  in  question  considers  Dante's  relation  and 
message  to  mankind  and  verily  womankind  may  read  be- 
tween the  lines. 

Duly  recognizing  Dante's  immortal  fame,  not  only  as  a 
poet  but  as  a  prophet  and  pioneer  of  trutli  and  freedom, 
the  writer  states  "he  was  also  an  arch  lover,  a  tender,  chaste, 
ardent  disciple  of  love."  And  to  point  the  moral  of  this 
phase  of  his  renown  he  adds  "his  pure  love,  his  obedient 
following  of  the  light  Beatrice  shed  upon  his  life  are  a  con- 
stant challenge  to  every  true  man  to  follow  the  purest  and 
brightest  star  that  shines  for  his  own  soul." 

Many  a  poet  and  not  a  few  philosophers  have  advanced 
such  lofty  views  of  love  as  make  it  the  purest  and  bright- 
est star  that  shines  for  man's  soul.  But  not  all  of  these 
have  ventured  to  advise  man  to  follow  it  under  the  circum- 
stances which  attended  Dante's  faithful  devotion  to  his 
"Glorious  lady."  For  this  love  of  Dante's  was  certainly 
compassed  about  with  many  of  those  features  that  render 

230 


Tzvin  Stars  in  Lovers  Firmajnent ,  231 

irregular  love  such  a  firebrand  to  society  that  few  writers 
can  be  found  to  courtesy  to  great  kings  or  poets  in  its  be- 
half. How  such  a  love  has  come  down  the  ages  untainted 
by  a  single  dark  reflection  may  be  due  partly  to  the  fine 
mysticism  of  the  scholars  who  sought  to  glorify  it  as  a 
purely  imaginary  worship  of  some  ideal  of  divine  wisdom 
and  goodness  which  the  dreamy  poet  carried  about  in  the 
recesses  of  his  own  brain.  Added  to  this,  of  course,  is  what 
one  writer  calls  the  remoteness  of  its  object,  since  it  seems 
clear  that  Beatrice  saw  her  lover  but  once  or  twice  in  her 
eartlily  form  and  semblance  and  not  till  she  had  enveloped 
herself  in  the  heavenly  did  she  give  free  expression  to  the 
love  for  which  his  ardent  soul  long  yearned — a  precaution 
which  might  indeed  protect  most  lovers  who  wish  to  prose- 
cute a  life  affection  without  benefit  of  clergy.  In  fact,  it 
is  here  that  every  Beatrice  in  love's  calender  should  apply 
herself  to  the  Dante  School  for  her  education,  and,  while 
men  are  learning  how  to  follow  the  brightest  star  that  shines 
for  their  souls,  instruct  herself  in  the  nice  business  of  keep- 
ing that  star  in  the  heavenly  remoteness  which  zealous  fol- 
lowing naturally  requires.  The  reckless  manner  in  which 
beautiful  stars  in  love's  firmament  have  fallen  to  earth  or 
gone,  like  the  lost  pleiad,  wandering  in  the  void,  for  lack 
of  the  Beatricean  secret  of  keeping  both  their  lover  and 
their  orbit  is  woeful  enough  to  make  that  glorious  lady  leave 
the  high  courts  of  the  blessed  to  teach  her  sisters,  as  she 
taught  her  lover,  what  "love  might  be,  hath  been  indeed 
and  is"  in  its  divine  end  and  essence. 

That  the  most  exquisite  love-poem  of  the  ages  was  given 
to  setting  forth  this  great  truth  has  strangely  availed  lit- 
tle in  woman's  world,  though  Dante  frankly  admitted  his 
obligations  to  Beatrice  for  the  exaltation  of  their  love  and 
plainly   sets   forth   her   method    of   preserving   it   from   all 


Tzerni  Stars  in  Loves  Firmament 

those  woes  and  pitfalls  that  yawn  for  ardent  lovers  who  go 
searching  for  love-light  in  the  eyes  of  married  women  and 
intercepting  their  pathways  in  the  street.  There  is  some- 
thing deliciously  honest  and  refreshing  in  that  open  manner 
in  which  he  declares  in  the  "Vita  Nuova"  his  frequent  efforts 
to  win  a  glance  from  Beatrice  in  her  walks,  though  only 
once  did  she  favor  him  with  a  passing  greeting.  And  yet 
there  is  evidence  in  the  end  of  the  story  that  she  loved  her 
strange  dark  lover — loved  him  well  enough  to  come  from 
the  bowers  of  Paradise  to  hold  him  true  to  their  love,  and 
the  moral  of  the  matchless  love-poem  surely  means  as  much 
to  the  woman  as  to  the  man  in  this  question  of  truth  to  the 
soul's  best  star. 

To  hold  her  lover  to  the  heights  is  the  only  hope  of  any 
woman  who  finds  herself  in  the  path  of  an  irregular  love,  for 
it  is  not  clear  at  all  that  Dante  himself  would  have  behaved 
as  he  should  if  more  encouragement  had  been  given  to  his 
passionate  pursuit  of  the  lady  of  his  "heart  and  mind,"  and 
by  no  means  is  it  certain  that  he  would  have  kept  his  wor- 
ship of  her  unchanged  if  she  had  stooped  from  her  starry 
heights  to  satisfy  in  any  way  his  earthly  yearnings,  how- 
ever fervently  he  might  have  importuned  her  thereto.  It 
is  meet  that  Dante  students  sliould  do  her  honor  by  declar- 
ing that  "she  shines  ever  above  the  image  of  the  poet  him- 
self." For  though  poets  and  artists  have  placed  her  in  the 
high  heaven  of  love,  yet  to  the  lover  more  than  to  the  lady 
has  the  world  looked  for  tlie  supreme  lesson  in  human  life 
and  affection.  It  is  a  lofty  moral  which  draws  from  this 
matchless  love  story  a  challenge  to  every  true  man  to  follow 
liis  soul's  star.  But  the  challenge  to  every  true  woman  to 
preserve  the  soul's  star  undimmed  may  yet  be  the  essential 
one  in  the  making  of  any  Dante,  ancient  or  modem,  in  the 
Difine  Comedv  of  life  and  love. 


POWER  OF  THE  WRITTEN  WORD 

BYRON  was  right.  It  is  the  drop  of  ink  falling  like 
dew  upon  a  thought  that  counts.  Buried  in  the  brain 
of  the  thinker  the  finest  thought  loses  its  true  force  and 
purpose.  Nothing  is  clearer  than  that  "Thoughts  shut  up 
want  air  and  spoil  like  bales  unopened  to  the  sun." 

Hence  printers'  ink  will  never  lose  its  power  and  purpose 
in  human  lives.  Nor  yet  will  those  who  use  it  ever  escape 
the  tremendous  responsibility  that  rests  upon  them.  Stu- 
dents of  history  have  little  difficulty  in  tracing  the  whole 
course  of  mankind  to  the  ideals  of  youth  which  the  written 
word  fostered.  The  strange  eclipse  of  liberalism  and  inter- 
nationalism, which,  before  this  mad  world  war,  promised 
so  much  for  mankind,  may  logically  therefore  be  laid  at 
the  door  of  the  "sentimental  nationalism"  which  the  litera- 
ture of  the  middle  classes  of  Europe  brought  to  bear  upon 
the  idealism  of  the  hour.  The  broad  patriotism  which 
would  make  the  world  its  country  and  the  cause  of  human- 
ity its  own,  was  lost  for  a  time  in  that  narrow  nationalism 
of  "my  Country  right  or  wrong"  which  has  wrecked  the 
cause  of  truth  and  justice  through  so  many  troubled  ages 
of  human  history. 

Add  to  Balzac's  statement  that  "the  whole  principle  of 
good  and  evil  lies  in  thought,"  the  later  writer's  assertion 
that  "the  literary  element  rules  the  whole  universe  of 
thought,"  and  Byron's  idea  of  making  humanity  think,  re- 
ceives its  full  endorsement.  To  bring  the  literary  bibles 
to  bear  upon  every  creature's  education  becomes  thus  a  first 

233 


234  Poxver  of  the  Written  Word 

principle  of  salvation  even  if  the  rising  generation  is  in- 
clined to  turn  its  back  upon  them.  The  fact  is,  too,  that 
there  is  no  saving  line  of  thought  that  does  not  run  back 
to  them.  There  is  some  truth  in  Brugere's  statement  that 
the  finest  and  most  beautiful  thoughts  have  been  carried 
away  before  our  times  and  that  to  glean  after  the  ancients 
is  all  that  remains  to  us.  It  matters  very  little,  however, 
where  the  thought  comes  from,  if  it  can  take  lodgment  in 
the  brain  and  stir  the  soul  to  vaster  issues.  Ingenious  mod- 
erns may  shape  it  anew  and  mould  it  into  creeds  and  cults 
but  the  mind  that  lays  hold  of  it  is  the  one  to  give  it  life 
in  the  veritable  sense  of  the  word  made  flesh  and  dwelling 
among  us.  "I  think  therefore  I  Am"  and  am  what  I  am, 
is  a  truth  of  life  and  philosophy  not  to  be  gainsaid.  Where- 
fore, nothing  in  all  the  forces  of  time  can  be  so  vitally 
important  as  that  which  gives  the  trend  to  human  thoughts. 
Balzac  declared  that  it  is  religion  alone  that  can  prepare, 
subdue,  and  mould  the  mind  of  man  to  life-giving  thoughts 
and  there  is  no  question  that  there  are  words  of  sacred  writ 
that  above  all  others  can  lift  man  into  the  eternal  spaces 
where  life  and  joy  forever  reside.  But,  while  what  Stev- 
enson calls  "our  little  piping  theologies,  tracts  and  ser- 
mons" have  so  dulled  and  blurred  the  light  of  sacred  truth 
one  must  go  to  the  fountain  head  to  find  the  joy-note  which 
is  ever  the  life-note  in  any  human  pathway.  And  if  this 
should  take  him  to  the  literary  Bibles  as  well  as  the  Chris- 
tian's Scriptures,  it  would  but  strengthen  Balzac's  claim 
that  religion  is  at  the  root  of  all  high  thinking. 

Truth  "married  to  immortal  verse"  takes  hold  of  the 
mind  in  a  way  Heaven  well  knew  when  it  made  its  poets 
"hierophants  of  inspiration."  Coleridge  foresaw  the  eclipse 
when  he  said,  "They  live  no  longer  in  the  faith  of  reason." 


I 


Power  of  the  Written   Word  236 


It  is  not  alone  that  "a  verse  may  find  him  whom  a  ser- 
mon flies,"  but  that  it  can  stay  with  him  in  an  hour  of  need 
to  turn  perchance  the  whole  current  of  his  thoughts  from 
darkness  and  despair  to  courage  and  light.  In  the  midst 
of  the  confusion  and  unrest  enveloping  all  life  and  thought 
at  this  hour,  may  still  be  heard  an  under  cry  for  some  one  to 
sing  us  the  song  of  the  eternal,  and  deep  in  the  heart  of 
humanity  persists  the  faith  that  that  song  will  ever  be  a 
song  of  joy.  "The  pendulum  of  the  years  will  swing  back," 
says  one  writer,  "and  bring  again  to  the  ears  of  men  the 
music  of  mighty  poets  who  will  sing,  not  of  wars  and  empire, 
nor  yet  of  things  sociological,  metaphysical  or  psycholog- 
ical, but  the  immortal  song  full  of  the  heat  and  glow  of  the 
r  eternal  hopes  and  emotions  of  the  human  heart." 

To  recognize  the  supremacy  of  spirit  and  let  the  kindred 
spirit  within  him  unite  him  to  the  supreme  source  of  joy  and 
power  is  the  working  hypothesis  recommended  to  man  by 
more  teachers  in  fact  than  the  one  who  presents  it  as  "the 
central  tenet  of  the  Christian  faith."  That  it  is  this,  and 
more,  masters  who  perceive  that  "sensible  and  conscientious 
men  all  over  the  world  are  of  one  religion"  are  not  slow  to 
show  us.  And  in  this  they  can  safely  rest,  that,  whether 
from  the  Hindu  Vedas  or  the  Christian  Scriptures,  from 
Socrates  or  Bergson,  from  David  or  Tagore,  the  thought 
comes  that  anchors  man  in  the  "God  consciousness"  for  his 
strength  and  hope,  the  peace  that  passeth  understanding 
flows  into  his  soul  at  that  hour  and  the  light  that  is  not  of 
day  illumines  all  his  way.  To  find  out  where  this  heart  of 
joy  resides  and  give  it  a  voice  beyond  singing  was  the  high 
calling  which  Stevenson  set  for  the  writers,  and  it  may  be 
well  that  "trenchant  essayists"  and  spiritual  advisors  are 
concerned  to  remind  those  who  let  fall  the  drop  of  ink  that 
makes  millions  think,  of  this  high  charge. 


NOTE  TIME  BY  ITS  GAIN,  NOT  LOSS 

MAN  as  a  progressive  being,  has  jet  to  find  himself. 
To  get  lost,  like  Dante,  "about  midway"  in  the  jour- 
ney of  his  life,  is  his  wonted  exploit.  It  is  much  the  fault 
of  the  calendar,  of  course.  It  set  him  reckoning  life  by 
figures  on  a  dial  and  when  a  certain  point  was  reached,  it 
palmed  off  on  him  the  illusion  that  the  best  had  gone,  and 
what  remained  was  cheerfully  to  be  designated  the  decline 
of  life.  But  Time  has  about  had  this  jest  out  with  man. 
Alfred  the  Great,  with  his  notched  candle,  can  no  longer 
make  a  tallow-dip  of  existence.  Back  of  him  is  the  bright 
sibyl  of  life,  whispering  through  all  science,  count  minutes 
by  sensations  and  not  by  calendars  and  every  moment  is  a 
gain  and  the  whole  race  a  life.  Man  was  not  made  a  wheel- 
work,  to  wind  up  in  youth  and  be  discharged  of  all  his  gifts 
and  forces  as  life  goes  on.  "Grown,  his  growth  lasts,"  and 
still  he  learns  a  thousand  things  a  minute  and  never  twice 
the  same.  It  is  curious  how  even  clocks  and  pessimists  could 
delude  man  into  the  idea  of  looking  backwards  for  the 
strength  and  glory  of  his  years,  or  halting  mournfully  in 
the  low-vaulted  past,  while  ever  the  dome  more  vast  was 
beckoning  him  onward.  And  yet  the  depressing  spell  has 
been  upon  him.  "We  will  not  believe,"  says  Emerson,  "that 
there  is  any  force  in  today  to  rival  or  recreate  the  beautiful 
yesterday."  "We  linger  in  the  ruins  of  the  old  tent,  where 
once  we  had  bread  and  shelter  and  organs  nor  believe  that 
the  spirit  can  feed,  shelter,  and  nerve  us  again.  We  fancy 
that  we  cannot  find  again,  aught  so  dear,  so  sweet,  so  grace- 

236 


Note  Time  by  Its  Gairiy  Not  Loss  237 

ful."  And,  meantime,  the  very  violets  in  the  grass,  and  the 
Maybloom  on  all  the  hillsides  are  proclaiming  the  eternal 
Genesis  of  life,  and  what  even  a  blind  girl  calls  the  "large 
certainties"  in  the  unmeasured  scale  of  being.  "We  cannot 
go  forward,  however,  without  leaving  some  things  behind," 
says  a  most  up-to-date  philosopher,  and  that  really  seems 
to  be  the  key-note  to  much  of  the  difficulty.  The  baby 
wants  its  rattle,  the  boy  his  hoby-horse,  while  Nature's 
kindly  nurse  is  offering  him  the  larger  gifts  which  he  will 
not  see.  Compensation  is  the  law  of  Life.  There  is  a  gain 
for  evcr}^  loss,  and  not  a  feeling  or  experience  touches  the 
soul  without  pushing  it  forward,  often,  perhaps,  against 
its  will.  Aye,  even  that  dark  Matrix  sorrow,  sends  forth 
I^L  the  newborn  spirit,  as  the  poet  tells  us:  "Strong  for  im- 
^^  mortal  toil  up  such  great  heights,  as  crown  o'er  crown  rise 
through  Eternity."  Indeed,  if  achievement  is  the  true  joy 
of  life — and  you  will  hunt  long  for  any  better  one — then 
must  the  young-leafed  Spring  bow  down  to  golden  Summer, 
and  Autumn  crown  the  field.  It  is  with  the  true  vision  and 
faculty  divine  that  the  artist  has  moulded  the  beautiful 
statues  of  opportunity  and  achievement,  in  forms  of  youth 
and  gladness.  For  he  who  strives  is  always  young,  and  to 
ride  the  billows  of  Time  with  clear  eye,  and  dauntless  smile, 
is  ever  to  achieve,  though  no  trumpets  of  Fame  may  tell  it 
to  the  nations.  With  sweet  insouciance,  youth  spurns  at 
fate,  but  with  knowledge,  brave  maturity  scoffs  at  its  power. 
"I  know  life,"  said  one  sweet  victor.  "It  mocks  you  at 
every  turn."  But  the  calm  smile  on  her  face  showed  life 
at  her  feet.  Howells  understood  this,  when  he  said  of  his 
heroine  that  "She  had  glimpsed  in  luminous  moments  an 
infinite  compassion,  encompassing  our  whole  being  like  a 
sea,  where  every  trouble  of  our  sins  and  sorrows  must  cease 
at  last,  like  a  circle  in  the  water."     The  radiant  Aphro- 


Note  Time  by  Its  Gain,  Not  Loss 

dite,  rising  from  the  sea,  can  feel  little  weight  of  years,  and 
significantly  enough,  it  is  this  luminous  glimpsing  of  the  life 
springs  and  verities  on  the  part  of  woman  herself,  that  is 
helping  the  whole  world  to  throw  off  that  old  man  of  the 
Mountains,  Time,  and  rise  to  the  grandeur  of  ever  increas- 
ing strength  and  enjoyment.  Nothing  in  all  the  develop- 
ments of  this  wonder-working  age  is  much  more  significant 
than  the  shifting  forward  into  the  lengthening  years  of  all 
those  interests,  powers,  and  enthusiasms  which  but  lately 
were  confined  to  the  brief  span  of  early  youth.  The  woman 
of  forty-five  or  fifty  today,  is  as  full  of  zest,  strength,  and 
bloom  as  the  most  radiant  belle  of  eighteen  of  the  olden 
days.  Indeed,  it  is  with  as  much  truth  as  satire,  that  a 
brilliant  English  countess  pictured  that  old-time  belle  as 
now  sallow  and  torn  by  the  conflicting  currents  of  the  stren- 
uous life  about  her,  while  the  clear-eyed  matron  of  60  is 
riding  the  topmost  wave  in  smiling  serenity,  running  clubs 
and  state  conventions,  or  getting  ready  for  her  third  hus- 
band. Meantime,  Professors  and  students  of  human  life, 
on  high  scientific  grounds,  are  assuring  her  brother  man 
that  the  brightest  and  most  useful  period  of  his  existence 
can  only  arrive  when  the  worries  and  experiments  of  youth 
are  over,  and  he  grasps  life  as  it  is.  And  as  for  those  poor 
and  imaginative  things  known  as  the  infirmities  of  age,  the 
menticulturist  proposes  to  eliminate  them  from  the  whole 
human  equation.  Thus  time  shall  lose  its  power  to  make 
hollow  specters  of  any  of  us,  and  a  dream,  old  as  the  human 
heart,  that  somehow,  time  should  be  giving  instead  of  tak- 
ing from  life's  store,  will  realize  itself  in  every  stage  of 
being.  The  wings  that  are  slowly  growing  within  the 
chrysalis  of  clay,  will  control  the  flight,  and  the  restless- 
ness and  discontent  with  which  they  have  battered  us  about 
in  our  days  of  blindness,  will  be  no  more.     Emerson,  in  his 


Note  Time  by  Its  Gain^  Not  Loss  ^9 

beautiful  essay  on  immortality,  represents  two  friends  ab- 
sorbed deeply  in  the  spirit  life,  and  mysteries,  who  met  ever 
along  the  dividing  years  with  the  question,  "What  light?" 
And,  gazing  into  each  other's  eyes  with  that  sole  thought, 
they  never  saw  that  Time  was  whitening  the  hair  or  blanch- 
ing the  cheek  of  either.  They  were  young  and  eager  souls 
to  each  other,  wrapped  ever  in  the  warm  glow  of  the  fade- 
less spirit.  It  is  sweet  to  think  that  the  time  will  come 
when  all  friends  will  meet,  and  look  into  each  others'  faces 
with  much  such  spirit  sight  and  questioning,  and  science  is 
not  slow  to  tell  us  that  that  way  lies  Arden's  forest,  and 
immortal  youth.  Nature  has  ever  done  her  utmost  to  fill 
each  year  with  equal  bloom.  She  never  painted  an  Easter 
lily  or  a  May  violet  a  shade  fairer  for  any  vision  of  youth 
that  was  brought  to  bear  upon  it,  despite  all  the  poetic  fic- 
tions that  have  been  palmed  off  on  us  in  that  direction. 
But  Ah!  she  has  waited  long  for  that  one  spirit  breath 
"rose  beauty  above"  to  "Pant  through  the  blueness,  and 
perfect  the  Summer"  for  purblind  man.  Perhaps  Mitchni- 
koff  was  right,  and  man's  early  years  are  too  troubled,  too 
strenuous,  for  that  fine  spirit  breath  to  reach  him.  The 
harvest  of  a  quiet  eye  may  be  indeed  the  one  to  gather  in 
the  perfect  sheaf  of  Life.  In  any  case,  the  field  is  rich  and 
endless.  The  golden  age  is  always  before  and  not  behind 
any  growing  creature,  and  friends  may  well  look  in  each 
other's  countenances,  to  behold  what  is  found,  not  lost,  il- 
luminated, not  darkened,  in  the  widening  pathway  of  end- 
less being.  Even  friendship  itself  sifts  out  the  chafF  as  the 
shadows  lengthen,  and  that  "masterpiece  of  nature,"  the  true 
friend,  comes  only  with  the  years.  "I  thought  you  had  a 
little  friend  with  you  today.  Tommy,"  said  a  lady  to  a  child 
who  was  walking  disconsolate  and  alone  about  a  playground 
where  the  favorite  playmate  had  been  wont  to  shadow  him. 


240  Note  Time  by  Its  Gain,  Not  Loss 

"I  have  a  little  friend,  but  I  hate  him,"  replied  the  hon- 
est lad,  and  the  sweet  vicissitudes  of  early  friendship  are 
well  represented  in  the  truthful  answer.  Bacon  knew  life, 
when  he  declared  that  friends,  like  wine,  grew  richer  as  they 
grew  older.  In  truth,  too,  poets  and  philosophers  are  be- 
ginning to  tell  us  this  of  all  good  things,  and  over  against 
the  long  madness  that  has  flung  every  gift  worth  having  into 
one  fierce  cauldron  of  youth,  is  the  saner  vision  that  now 
reserves  a  few  allurements  for  man's  ripening  years. 


A  WORD  MORE 

THE  last  word  on  manners  was  not  with  our  gentle 
Emerson,  difficult  as  it  might  be  to  find  anything  more 
exhaustive  and  refined  than  his  treatment  of  that  subject. 
Speaking  from  the  social  standpoint,  his  exquisite  and  dis- 
cerning canvas  of  the  much  canvassed  theme  leaves  nothing 
to  be  added.  It  was  when  he  covered  the  whole  life-field  with 
the  assertion  that  there  is  always  time  for  courtesy  that  he 
struck  ground  where  some  things  remain  to  be  said.  Pre- 
eminently, too,  America  is  the  place  to  say  them.  The  au- 
thor who  carries  the  proposition  into  the  business  world 
makes  a  fair  start  in  that  direction  when  he  declares  that 
the  Americans  spoil  more  business  through  lack  of  good 
manners  than  in  any  other  way. 

Yet  to  leave  the  matter  there  is  much  like  expecting  to 
save  sinners  by  convicting  them  of  sin.  It  is  not  difficult 
to  convince  a  nation  of  hustlers  in  every  line  of  business  that 
they  are  deficient  in  manners,  and  no  doubt  the  worse  for 
it,  since  many  of  the  poor  driven  creatures  have  a  trouble- 
some sense  of  such  drawbacks  in  their  business  careers.  But 
to  convert  them  to  a  belief  that  there  is  always  time  for 
courtesy  is  a  work  of  grace  that  would  require  a  whole 
gospel  to  set  forth — perhaps,  too,  a  new  code  of  manners 
to  meet  the  need. 

It  seems  hard  for  some  people  to  realize  that  the  man- 
ners of  the  drawing-room  can  never  be  made  to  fit  the  busi- 
ness world.  The  street-car  conductor  who  told  two  ladies 
exchanging  courteous   farewells  while  he  waited  past  time 

241 


242  A  Word  More 

for  one  of  them  to  alight  that  his  car  was  "no  'ception  par- 
lor" may  have  failed  in  his  manners  but  he  certainly  indi- 
cated the  failure  of  parlor  manners  in  such  a  place.  The 
gentlemanly  railroad  officials  who  furnish  formulas  for  the 
ticket  agent  to  use  in  meeting  the  inane  questions  put  to 
them  by  the  traveling  public,  and  all  manner  of  explicit  di- 
rections with  tickets  and  wrappers  for  the  traveler  him- 
self, know  something  of  the  difficulties  to  be  encountered  in 
preserving  the  courtesies  of  their  tremendous  business.  Ap- 
parently, too,  they  have  a  fair  sense  of  the  ground  of  those 
difficulties,  for  when  a  lady,  recently  inquiring  for  her 
train,  was  able  to  give  its  name  and  number,  a  higher  official 
standing  near  smilingly  declared  that  she  was  one  in  a 
thousand. 

When  it  comes  to  dealing  with  different  lines  of  life  and 
activity  the  laws  of  behavior  may  indeed  "yield  to  the  en- 
ergy of  the  individual."  In  professional  as  well  as  business 
life,  the  more  energetic  the  worker  the  less  time  is  left  for 
courtesy  in  the  common  acceptation  of  the  term.  Doctors, 
authors  and  editors  are  often  held  up  as  examples  of 
breaches  of  etiquette  in  their  dealings  with  lesser  creatures. 
Yet  no  doubt  they  all  suffer  serious  drains  upon  their  time 
and  energy  by  people  wholly  ignorant  of  the  demands  of 
their  calling  or  the  etiquette  that  properly  belongs  to  it. 
Even  the  very  forms  of  speech  in  the  business  and  profes- 
sional world  carry  sometimes  a  special  meaning  in  their 
place  that  outside  of  it  might  seem  objectionable  if  not  of- 
fensive. A  very  gracious  editor  of  a  large  newspaper  who 
rather  prided  himself  on  maintaining  perfect  courtesy 
toward  all  callers,  fell  woefully  from  grace  by  simply  ap- 
plying the  newspaper  term  "Stuff"  to  a  contribution  one 
lady  brought  him.  A  brief  glance  at  the  Ms.  showed  him 
that  it  belonged  to  a  class  of  matter  they  had  ceased  to 


A  Word  More  243 

publish.  But  when  he  inadvertently  told  her  that  they  were 
not  using  stuff  of  that  nature,  she  exclaimed  indignantly: 
"Stuff  is  it,  sir !  Well,  at  least  I  thought  I  was  coming  into 
the  presence  of  a  gentleman,"  and  the  fine  garment  of  man- 
ners ceased  to  adorn  that  autocrat  of  the  press  for  her  and 
her  set  from  that  hour. 

Editors  perhaps  have  taken  warning  from  experiences  of 
that  kind,  for  they  now  couch  their  answers  to  the  undesired 
applicants  for  their  favor  in  such  gracious  and  beguiling 
language  that  it  is  rather  a  pleasure  to  be  rejected  by  them. 
Indeed,  there  are  some  of  the  busiest  editors  who  will  spare 
time  for  words  of  encouragement  with  a  returned  Ms.  that 
ought  to  let  them  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  as  angels 
of  the  helping  hand  now  open  it. 

The  greatest  are  the  kindliest  in  every  instance,  and  this 
may  be  a  point  worth  noting  in  that  plea  for  manners  in  the 
business  world  which  the  students  of  the  subject  are  now 
presenting.  It  naturally  connects  itself  with  that  finer  view 
of  business  which  holds  the  human  element  above  all  systems 
or  scientific  formulas  that  were  ever  devised;  for  it  takes 
a  man  of  large  mind  and  heart  and  thorough  understanding 
of  mankind  to  realize  the  power  of  simple  kindliness,  from 
which  all  good  manners  proceed,  in  dealing  with  men  every- 
where. The  old  Greek  sage  who  said  that  the  charm  of  a 
man  is  his  kindness  gave  man  the  prime  rule  for  winning 
his  cause  in  any  field  where  human  nature  figures,  and  the 
growing  sense  of  human  brotherhood  adds  the  crowning  im- 
pulse to  Christian  courtesy  toward  every  one  with  whom 
man  in  any  station  or  relation  has  to  do. 

The  general  manager  of  a  large  business  concern  knew 
well  the  ground  of  success  when  he  looked  for  a  sales  man- 
ager who  was  "big  and  broad  mentally,  but  most  of  all  a 
man  who  was  human."     The  man  who  is  big  and  human, 


244  A   Word  More 

though  he  may  not  find  time  for  the  forms  of  courtesy  pre- 
scribed by  polite  society,  will  never  forget  the  respect  due 
to  the  human  being  in  all  his  manner  and  demeanor  toward 
him.  It  is  the  pompous  clerk  or  subordinate  dressed  in  a 
little  brief  authority  who  assumes  such  rude  and  supercilious 
airs  as  spoil  business  in  his  atmosphere.  The  great  cap- 
tains of  industry,  the  magnates  in  the  commercial  world, 
whatever  else  they  may  be,  are  men  who  maintain  the  cour- 
tesies of  life  and  good  breeding  in  business  as  other  relations. 
It  is  true,  however,  that  "good  manners  need  the  support  of 
manners  in  others"  and  the  people  with  whom  business  men 
have  to  deal  may  not  give  exactly  the  support  indicated. 

"Business  tips  to  Americans"  might  take  into  account 
the  good  or  ill  effect  which  the  manners  of  the  general  pub- 
lic toward  those  who  serve  it  naturally  have.  People  of 
any  country  who  fail  in  civility  to  the  humblest  clerk  or 
employe  in  any  field  must  help  to  spoil  business  more  seri- 
ously perhaps  than  they  realize,  as  well  as  some  other  things 
much  finer  than  business. 

The  changes  in  economic  and  industrial  lines  which  send 
women  of  established  social  position  into  the  business  world 
have  done  much  toward  bringing  the  amenities  of  life  to  bear 
upon  it,  and  still  there  is  room  for  something  more.  From 
the  Christmas  shopper  to  the  mistress  of  the  mansion  there 
is  still  too  little  of  that  kindly  consideration  for  those  that 
serve  them  which  brings  the  gentle  word  and  manner  that 
true  courtesy  and  good  breeding  demand,  and  above  all  the 
social  ideals  of  the  hour.  From  the  "noblesse  oblige"  of  the 
old  order  to  the  human  brotherhood  and  equality  of  the 
new,  the  transition  is  not  sufficiently  complete  to  have  wiped 
out  class  distinctions,  and  curtness  rather  takes  the  place 
of  condescension  in  the  dealings  of  the  upper  classes  with 


A   Word  More 


M5 


the  lower,  which,  though  less  humiliating,  is  certainly  not 
more  conducive  to  good  manners. 

When  all  is  told  it  is  the  Christian  ideal  of  loving  kind- 
ness toward  all,  which  "the  first  true  gentleman  that  ever 
breathed"  brought  to  the  world,  that  must  prevail  if  men 
are  ever  to  achieve  that  genuine  courtesy  for  which  there 
is  always  time. 


LOVE'S  troublp:s 

We  are  all  born  for  love.  The  strangest  thing  about  it  is  however, 
that  while  love  is  the  one  eternal  and  transcendent  passion,  there  is 
none  less  sympathized  with  by  others  in  cases  where  its  existence  does 
not  conform  to  every  custom  and  convention  sanctioned  by  time  and 
tradition. 

— Johnson. 

SHAKESPEARE  was  by  no  means  the  less  Shakespeare 
when  he  reckoned  Love's  troubles  among  the  crowning 
ills  that  "make  calamity"  of  earthly  life.  Even  at  its  best 
estate  its  encounter  with  time  is  calamitous  enough  to  war- 
rant the  poets  in  all  the  mournful  strains  they  have  given 
to  "Love  in  such  a  wilderness  as  this."  It  is  not  in  the 
tragedies  and  suicides  that  find  their  way  into  the  daily 
papers  of  all  nations  that  the  ruinous  work  of  love  in  blind 
human  pathways  is  greatest.  In  hearts  that  never  betray 
a  sign  of  this  anguish  to  the  world  its  wounds  are  deadliest 
and  in  the  simple  fact  that  the  course  of  true  love  never 
does  run  smooth  lies  a  depth  of  universal  sorrow  and  loss 
that  ought  to  find  some  mitigation  if  love  is  to  retain  any 
foothold  on  our  troubled  earth.  Indeed  long  ago  one  stu- 
dent of  the  case  declared  that  "All  the  evils  we  know  on 
earth,  find  in  the  violence  done  to  love  their  full  and  legiti- 
mate birth." 

Unless  one  is  to  hold  with  Hardy,  that  man  is  in  the 
toils  of  some  malicious  power  bent  on  causing  suffering,  it 
is  impossible  to  believe  that  so  divine  a  spirit  as  love  was 
sent  on  earth  to  work  such  havoc  in  human  hearts  and  lives. 
It  was  a  risky  business  no  doubt  to  let  Love  follow  man  out 
of  Eden  into  a  world  of  thorns  and  thistles  and  that  com- 

246 


Lovers  Troubles  247 

mercialisni  which  is  now  found  to  be  the  original  sin.  Yet 
there  seems  to  be  no  sufficient  reason  for  fortune,  even  in 
such  a  world,  to  prove  "an  unrelenting  foe  to  Love"  if  man 
could  put  some  right  estimate  upon  life  itself.  That  "Love 
is  life's  fine  centre  and  includes  heart  and  mind"  is  a  truth 
that  more  than  poets  recognize,  yet  it  is  in  a  mad  chase  for 
what  they  call  life  that  Love  is  lost  to  a  majority  of  man- 
kind. By  this  blindness  all  manner  of  counterfeits  for  love 
are  caught  up  to  meet  the  passing  needs  or  ideas  of  a  con- 
ventional life  and  society  and  thus  the  fulness  of  life  which 
is  ever  in  love  is  comparatively^  unknown  to  the  race.  Mean- 
time the  haunting  dream  of  it,  or  perchance  some  unauthor- 
ized acquaintance  with  it,  fills  with  pathetic  yearning  and 
unrest  the  souls  of  hapless  mortals.  In  the  beginning  it  was 
not  so,  as  the  Good  Book  itself  declares,  but  because  of  the 
hardness  of  men's  hearts  all  this  abuse  of  life  and  love  came 
about.  Worse  still  it  has  come  to  be  accepted  so  compla- 
cently as  a  part  of  man's  make-up  that  one  of  the  greatest 
of  the  matchless  French  writers  presents  his  hero  in  the 
toils  of  two  or  three  imperfect  loves  and  at  the  end  declares 
he  "was  a  great  sinner"  but,  in  big  capitals,  "A  MAN." 
If  nature's  verdict  "This  was  a  man"  is  the  one  in  point, 
as  Shakespeare  made  it,  sinners  against  Love  could  hardly 
merit  it,  since  there  great  nature  allows  no  shuffling.  To 
be  true  to  the  one  Love  of  his  heart  and  soul  despite  all  time 
or  fortune  can  bring  against  it,  is  the  victory  over  life  and 
death  she  imperatively  demands.  Graciously,  too,  she  has 
marked  out  the  way  for  man  to  know  the  true  Love  from  the 
false.  There  are  women,  said  John  J.  Ingalls,  whom  to  love 
makes  it  impossible  ever  to  love  another.  What  surer  rem- 
edy could  be  devised  for  the  fickle  and  imperfect  loves  that 
leave  man  still  hungering  for  another.  "Whoever  has  loved 
twice  has  never  loved  at  all.     A  man  may  have  two  passions, 


248  Love's  Troubles 

never  two  loves,"  wrote  Alexander  Duman,  recognizing  as 
Ingalls  did  nature's  provision  in  the  case.  To  be  sure  one 
sorry  cynic  observes  that  "every  man  seeks  his  ideal  woman, 
but  heaven  only  knows  when  he  finds  her — ^he  never  does." 
That,  however,  is  a  gross  libel  upon  the  race.  Every  man 
and  every  woman  knows  it  full  well  when  the  true  all-satis- 
fying love  takes  possession  of  the  soul  and  if  every  child  of 
earth  would  wait  for  that  assurance  though  there  might  be 
fewer  marriages  there  would  be  an  end  to  the  false  and 
wretched  ones  which  hold  man  back  from  all  the  Eden  joy 
and  glory  designed  for  him.  But  meantime  such  dire 
calamities  attend  the  thing  called  love  in  the  path  of  marry- 
ing mortals  that  they  might  be  tempted  to  imitate  the  dis- 
tracted nations  that  in  the  face  of  loud  pretensions  to  broth- 
erly love  were  but  yesterday  found  declaring  in  the  fiery 
blasts  of  war  "enough  of  that  kind  of  love,  let  us  try  hatred 
instead."  At  least  hatred  carries  an  open  front  and  men 
may  face  it  or  turn  their  backs  on  it  as  they  choose.  But 
who  can  honorably  escape  from  the  evils  of  unhappy  loves 
that  have  entangled  them  in  their  social,  perchance  legal, 
meshes?  Above  all  who  can  measure  the  wreck  of  joy  and 
power  they  effect  in  that  fine  seat  and  centre  of  life  where 
love  resides  ?  The  proud  silence  in  which  the  victims  of  love's 
wounds  hide  their  pains  and  losses,  renders  this  evil  more 
dark  and  deadly  than  any  other  in  human  pathways.  The 
woman  who  recently  declared,  in  a  prize  essay,  that  of  all 
the  achievements  of  her  life  she  was  proudest  of  the  living 
lie  that  enabled  her  to  turn  a  smiling  front  to  family  and 
society  while  enduring  a  loathsome  hell  with  a  husband  who 
loved  and  supported  another  woman,  supposedly  unknown 
to  her,  unearthed  a  condition  in  human  affairs  that  tells 
what  beastly  wrongs,  crosses  and  concealments  in  love  may 
cover.     Jacob  serving  seven  years  for  Rachel  only  to  have 


Love's  Troubles  249 

Leah  imposed  upon  him  for  family  reasons  and  the  custom 
of  a  country  is  a  patriarchal  lunacy  not  unknown  to  our 
own  times.  But  recently  comes  a  story  of  a  selfish  mother 
who  pledged  a  son  of  eighteen  not  to  marry  while  any  of  the 
family  relatives  had  need  of  him,  and  it  was  not  until  he  was 
in  his  seventy-eighth  year  that  the  last  of  those  relatives  gra- 
ciously died  and  freed  him  for  old  age's  chance  in  the  rosy 
realm  of  love.  Not  infrequently  some  departing  husband  or 
wife  will  take  steps  to  prevent  any  future  unions  in  the  one 
left  behind,  although  admitting  by  this  very  act  the  pitiful 
failure  of  their  own.  Let  the  foresworn  chance  of  the  ideal 
love  and  wedded  life  cross  the  path  of  such  a  darkly  bound 
victim,  and  the  height  of  earthly  woe  and  martyrdom  is 
reached.  Nothing  in  all  the  range  of  time  can  work  such  mis- 
ery in  human  lives  as  this  same  love  which  was  no  doubt  meant 
to  bring  the  quintessence  of  joy  to  all  lives.  For- 
tunately, too,  it  is  not  left  without  witnesses  to  its  su- 
preme worth  in  the  right  hands.  There  are  homes  of  spot- 
less purity,  infinite  peace,  where  heaven  tunes  the  harp  of 
life  to  such  love  "as  spirits  feel  in  worlds  whose  course  is 
equable  and  pure"  and  the  gates  of  Eden  open  to  man  as 
when  time  began. 

"Love  is  the  only  good  in  the  world,"  says  Browning,  and 
clearly  it  is  the  only  Good  upon  which  the  ideal  home  that 
is  the  hope  of  the  world  can  be  founded.  Further  still  it 
is  the  only  Good  that  carries  its  own  assurance  of  the  eternal 
home  where  all  is  love.  Whoever  has  truly  loved  knows  that 
the  wondrous  life  he  has  entered  into  is  endless — is  one  with 
the  life  of  God. 

He  who  would  find  life  therefore  must  find  love,  for  he 
who  misses  Love  has  scarcely  crossed  the  threshold  of  that 
sacred  temple  of  Life  whose  dome  pierces  "the  white  radiance 
of  eternity." 


MARRIAGE  AS  A  DUTY 

THAT  life  for  men  of  these  momentous  days  "consists 
entirely  of  duties"  is  a  proposition  that  might  reach 
beyond  the  stern  Briton  by  whom  it  was  propounded.  But 
when  it  comes  to  reckoning  marriage  among  those  duties, 
it  is  not  strange  that  some  men,  like  the  lad  who  was  told 
that  it  was  his  duty  to  love  a  disagreeable  neighbor,  wish 
that  they  could  be  got  in  duty  free.  Of  all  things  that  elude 
the  intermeddlers,  pious  or  impious  offices,  this  matter  of 
taking  a  partner  for  life  is  the  supreme  one.  Marriage  may 
go  by  destiny,  as  the  great  Bard  claims,  but  need  and  ex- 
pediency strike  chill  notes  in  the  case  till  manifest  destiny 
shows  itself  on  some  higher  plane. 

"Hail  wedded  love!  Mysterious  law,  true  source  of  hu- 
man offspring,"  wrote  England's  poet  of  the  golden  lyre 
and  the  nation  that  gave  Milton  to  the  world  may  well  be 
confounded  at  the  idea  of  marrying  to  replenish  the  race 
numerically.  Considering  what  hasty  and  hap-hazard  mar- 
riages have  done  for  the  race  it  seems  the  climax  of  folly 
to  look  for  any  benefit  along  such  lines.  Indeed  all  the 
long  struggle  of  mankind  to  reach  the  heights  looks  to  the 
ideal  marriage,  the  "marriage  of  true  minds"  for  its  real- 
ization. 

To  lower  the  standard  of  marriage  would  be  about  the 
last  calamity  war's  aftermath  could  bring  upon  the  World. 
Not  very  much  farther  would  it  have  to  go  in  the  backward 
path  to  make  the  forcible  seizure  of  wives  and  the  fate  of 

250 


Marriage  as  a  Duty  S51 

the  Sabine  women  a  part  of  this  principle  of  expediency  and 
necessity  which  it  advocates.  For  although  "attractive 
girls"  may  truly  appear  in  the  returning  soldiers'  horizon, 
yet  the  mutual  nature  of  that  attraction  can  no  more  be  as- 
sured in  their  path  than  any  other. 

"Much  ado  there  was  God  wot 
"He  wold  love  and  she  wold  not, 

wrote  an  old  English  ballad  maker  in  the  days  when  attrac- 
tive girls  were  much  more  ready  to  take  the  men  that  were 
"willing"  to  marry  them  than  in  our  time.  Half-hearted 
and  one-sided  love  affairs  make  more  and  more  ado  in  hu- 
man pathways  as  the  world  advances  especially  in  relation 
to  marriage  where  the  two  hearts  that  beat  as  one  are  the 
prime  necessity,  and  yet  as  much  the  sport  of  chance  or  fate 
as  when  Dan  Cupid  began  his  capricious  work  with  human 
lives  and  loves.  Whatever  has  become  of  romance  or  re- 
ligion in  these  desperate  days,  love  still  follows  its  own 
laws  and  leading  and  defies  the  efforts  of  courts  or  ar- 
mies to  move  it  against  its  will.  Not  even  his  own  will 
can  control  the  entrance  of  that  mysterious  visitant  that 
takes  possession  of  the  lover's  soul  and  sways  it  to  its  pur- 
poses. "Is  human  love  the  growth  of  human  will?"  asks 
one  of  the  world's  great  novelists  and  the  answer  is  written 
in  the  woeful  story  of  many  a  hero  and  heroine  who  sought 
to  bring  will  and  worldly  interests  to  bear  upon  human  af- 
fections. Duty  and  expediency  may  prevent  the  expression 
of  love  in  its  own  direction  but  neither  of  them  can  turn  it 
in  any  other  direction  and  when  this  fact  is  duly  recognized 
"wedded  love — true  source  of  human  offspring"  will  shape 
human  life  and  wipe  out  forever  all  laws  or  theories  touch- 
ing marriage  save  those  that  Love  has  made. 


252  Marriage  as  a  Duty 

"Marriage  is  a  matter  of  more  worth  than  to  be  dealt  in 
by  attorneyship,"  wrote  the  master  seer  of  the  ages,  but  of 
what  celestial  worth,  no  vision  of  man  may  divine  till  Love 
has  had  its  perfect  work  in  human  lives  and  unions. 


THE  WORD  AND  THE  IDEA 

NO  one  denies  the  power  of  words.  Yet  the  half  of  it 
has  never  been  told.  The  very  meaning  of  existence  it- 
self has  been  lost  in  one  dark  word — dead.  "It  is  an  as- 
tonishing thing  how  man  believes  in  words,"  said  Turgenev, 
and  it  is  more  than  probable  that  the  overpowering  horror 
that  invests  that  process  of  rebirth,  of  life's  renewals,  which 
runs  through  all  nature  is  comprehended  in  the  blind  ac- 
ceptance and  belief  humanity  attaches  to  that  word,  dead. 
The  idea  of  death,  born  of  darkness  and  superstition,  has 
troubled  the  sages  of  all  history,  yet  wiping  out  completely 
the  form  of  speech  that  carried  this  idea  has  been  too  feebly 
considered  even  in  their  counsels  to  bear  much  relation  to 
the  common  tongue.  Browning's  earnest  prayer  to  his 
friends,  "Never  speak  of  me  as  dead,"  carried  an  admoni- 
tion that  might  work  a  veritable  revolution  in  human 
thought,  and  life  which  is  the  outcome  of  thought — if  widely 
heeded.  Shakespeare  expressed  the  extraordinary  situa- 
tion which  the  word  and  the  idea  have  brought  about  when 
he  said, 

"Of  all  the  wonders  that  I  yet  have  heard 
It  seems  to  me  most  strange  that  men  should  fear. 
Seeing  that  death,  a  necessary  end, 
Will  come  when  it  will  come." 

Viewed  as  a  necessary  end  to  one  stage  of  being  in  Life's 
progressive  path  it  would  indeed  be  most  strange  that  any 
rational  creature  should  attach  to  death  the  fear  and  horror 

253 


254  The  Word  and  the  Idea 

that  commonly  becloud  it  and  to  call  it  by  some  better  name 
may  be  a  prime  step  in  that  victory  over  death  which  the 
Master-seer  of  the  ages  predicted  for  mankind.  One  of  the 
modern  poets  touches  the  core  of  the  matter  when  he  writes, 

"Words  are  great  forces  in  the  realm  of  life 
Who  talks  of  evil  conjures  into  shape 
That  formless  thing  and  gives  it  life  and  scope 
This  is  the  law;  then  let  no  word  escape 
That  does  not  breathe  of  everlasting  hope." 

Only  he  who  can  master  the  laws  of  the  mind  and  their 
supreme  influence  upon  all  the  character  and  events  of  life 
could  duly  measure  what  it  has  meant  to  humanity  to  have 
the  chrysalis  instead  of  the  winged  butterfly  give  the  con- 
trolling idea  to  the  physical  changes  wliich  from  insect  to 
man  marks  the  progress  of  evolutionary  being  throughout 
all  its  realm.  That  the  Supreme  Master  of  life  and  all 
its  forces  declared  of  the  loved  one  who  had  lain  three  days 
in  his  grave  "He  is  not  dead,"  should  warrant  the  Christian 
world  at  least  in  denying  that  any  of  their  loved  ones  were 
dead  or  ever  thinking  of  them  in  such  ghastly  light.  The 
fact  is,  too,  that  the  human  heart  does  reject  the  awful 
thing  the  word,  in  its  common  acceptation  implies,  and  some- 
times, to  mourning  souls  a  strange  sense  of  the  living  spirit, 
closer  and  dearer  than  ever  before,  stirs  a  pulse  of  real  ec- 
stacy  as  in  a  bond  of  life  and  love  lifted  beyond  all  reach  of 
time  and  man's  mortality.  Especially  is  this  true  where 
barriers  of  time  and  fate  have  kept  kindred  spirits  apart  in 
their  earthly  pilgrimage.  Above  all  the  anguish  of  the 
human  separation  in  that  last  great  change,  flashes  the 
quick  and  rapturous  consciousness  of  the  beloved  one  set 
free  to  claim  his  own  in  earth  or  heaven  as  "spirit  with 
spirit  may  meet."     Mystic,  intangible  as   this  may  be,  it 


The  Word  and  the  Idea  255 

belongs  to  those  tilings  which,  persisting  in  consciousness, 
are  declared  by  the  great  author  of  the  Synthetic  philosophy 
to  be  legitimate  subjects  of  scientific  interest  and  investiga- 
tion. Assuredly  it  belongs  to  those  things  which  so  foster 
the  belief  in  that  awakening  from  sleep  which  the  whole  logic 
of  life  demands  that  the  very  name  of  death  should  be  lost 
in  the  growing  light  of  immortality.  The  patient  souls 
that  "winning  times  discharge"  have  "passed  triumphant  to 
the  life  more  large"  surely  deserve  some  better  thought  of 
them  than  the  dead  word  dead  allows.  As  Mr.  Palmer  said 
of  the  beloved  wife  and  famous  educator  who  left  him  for 
that  larger  life,  "To  leave  the  dead  wholly  dead  is  rude. 
Vivid  creature  that  she  was  she  must  not  be  forgotten." 
That  goes  to  the  core  of  the  matter.  Vivid  creature,  that 
she  was  what  had  aught  that  dies  to  do  with  that  flame  of 
life;  what  has  it  ever  to  do  with  the  burning,  yearning  soul 
that  with  its  latest  human  breath,  cries  out  for  life  and 
the  life  more  abundant? 

"As  the  bodily  powers  fail,  my  soul  grows  more 
luminous,"  said  Victor  Hugo,  "when  I  go  down  to  the 
grave  I  can  say  I  have  finished  my  day's  work,  but 
I  cannot  say  I  have  finished  my  life.  My  day's  work  will 
begin  again  the  next  morning.  The  tomb  is  not  a  blind 
alley ;  it  is  a  thoroughfare.  It  closes  on  the  twilight  to  open 
with  the  dawn."  In  the  light  of  such  an  assurance  a  man 
might  well  say  "never  speak  of  me  as  dead."  And  that  it 
is  an  assurance  all  humanity  inherited  when  man,  touched 
by  the  breath  of  the  eternal,  became  a  living  soul,  science 
itself  must  recognize  in  the  indestructibility  of  all  life,  even 
though  science  may  not  yet  penetrate  the  veil  that  shuts 
man  from  the  fuller  knowledge  of  the  life  beyond.  Yet  even 
that,  perchance,  might  come  to  man,  if  the  truth  of  his  im- 
mortality were  not  so  overborne  by  the  thought  and  speech 


256  The  Word  and  the  Idea 

that  keep  the  physical  and  not  the  spiritual  phase  of  ex- 
istence forever  in  the  foreground.  If  life,  with  no  human 
infusions  of  death  in  the  cup,  were  the  draught  held  to  man's 
lips,  how  truly  might  he  "quaff  immortality  and  joy"  from 
the  foaming  beaker.  Forever  and  forever  it  should  be  a 
song  of  life,  not  death,  on  human  lips,  and  what  it  would 
mean  to  mankind  one  poet  reveals  in  the  ringing  strain, 

"Sing  me,  O  singer,  a  song  of  life," 
Cried  an  eager  youth  to  me. 
And  I  sang  of  a  life  without  alloy 
Beyond  our  years — till  the  heart  of  the  boy 

Caught  the  golden  beauty,  and  love,  and  joy, 

Of  the  great  eternity. 


AS  THE  WAR  REVEALED  HER 

TO  find  some  good  in  things  evil  is  a  philosophy  of  life 
which  was  never  more  desperately  appealed  to  than 
in  those  mad  war  days.  From  the  old  theological  stand- 
point of  attempting  to  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man  the 
effort  was  as  vain  as  ever.  Even  from  a  rationalistic  stand- 
point no  creature  could  make  out  why  a  race  of  intelligent 
thinking  beings  could  not  bring  the  ends  of  justice  and  lib- 
erty to  pass  without  such  a  senseless,  brutish,  wholesale 
butchery  of  each  other.  Taking  about  any  of  the  blessed 
results  which  the  courageous  optimists  would  draw  from  the 
unblessed  carnage  it  is  easy  to  see  that  common  enlighten- 
ment should  have  brought  them  to  pass  ages  ago.  The  woman 
question  is  pre-eminently  one  in  point  here,  because  it 
reached  such  a  swift  and  world-wide  solution  in  the  revela- 
tion of  woman's  true  character  and  worth.  But  what  is  to 
be  said  of  a  world  that  never  found  it  out  before.  A  recent 
writer  directly  declared  that  woman  was  completely  changed 
by  the  war,  while  the  significant  fact  that  the  change  is 
in  the  public  with  which  she  has  to  deal  does  not  enter  into 
his  calculations.  Indeed  the  great  truth  that  woman's 
case,  like  that  of  her  brothers,  has  passed  into  the  hands  of 
destiny  and  the  on-marching  ages  does  not  appear  to  im- 
press all  beholders  who  consider  the  marvelous  changes  of 
this  fateful  hour.  To  realize  that  everlasting  nature 
changes  not  and  that  woman  is  today  what  she  always  was 
and  always  will  be  in  every  essential  feature  of  her  being 
and  aims,  is  something  that  may  still  require  time  to  en- 

257 


258  As  the  War  Revealed  Her 

graft  itself  on  the  public  mind.  Nor  is  it  so  very  strange 
considering  some  preconceived  ideas  of  woman  in  ante-war 
days,  that  man  deems  it  almost  a  re-creation  which  pre- 
sents her  now  as  a  being  "sublime  in  self-sacrifice,"  capable 
and  devoted  in  service,  rich  in  resource,  and,  as  ex-Premier 
Asquith  declared,  "performing  work  without  detriment  to 
the  prerogatives  of  her  sex  heretofore  regarded  as  belong- 
ing exclusively  to  man."  The  picture  that  perturbed  poli- 
ticians and  social  censors  previously  drew  of  modern 
woman  bears  little  relation  to  such  a  noble  sisterhood.  Not 
only  the  "dire  and  forbidding  features"  of  the  Militant 
Suffragette,  but  the  audacious  and  law-defying  attitude  of 
the  social  leader  entered  into  the  cartoon,  and  no  doubt 
created  an  impression  not  easily  effaced.  Out  of  the  mouth 
of  the  playwrights  and  novelists  of  ante-war  days  David 
Grant  drew  a  conception  of  modern  woman  and  what  she 
was  "after"  that  might  almost  warrant  an  idea  that  noth- 
ing short  of  a  new  deluge  or  world  cataclysm  of  some  kind 
could  cut  short  her  career  and  restore  the  good  and  self- 
sacrificing  woman  as  God  made  her  to  a  place  in  the  sun. 
A  being  "of  unstable  virtue,"  bent  upon  "individual  lib- 
erty," especially  in  the  matter  of  "hunting  the  father  of 
her  child  in  or  out  of  marriage  as  the  approved  parentage 
might  declare  itself."  This,  we  are  told,  was  the  new  woman 
as  her  "brilliant  male  leaders"  presented  her  and  naturally 
poor  intimidated  man  could  only  see  his  finish  in  such  "ad- 
vanced feminism."  More  naturally  still,  however,  no  woman 
on  earth  could  possible  recognize  herself  or  her  sisters  in 
such  a  guise  nor  conceive  how  woman's  struggle  for  the 
purer,  higher  ideals  in  all  the  relations  of  life  and  society 
could  possibly  be  so  misconstrued.  It  is  evident  that  men 
and  nations  never  knew  woman  in  her  "noble  spirit  and  self- 
sacrificing  efficiency"  before  her  work  in  this  terrible  hour 


As  the  War  Revealed  Her  259 

of  the  world's  history  revealed  her  to  them.  But  that  is 
no  reason  why  she  should  be  deemed  in  any  sense  a  product 
of  that  demon's  carnival  of  war. 

There  is  an  old  saying,  "Earth  waits  for  her  Queen," 
and  perchance  in  that  final  struggle  of  brute  force  the  way 
was  being  prepared  for  her — nevertheless  even  yet  it  seems 
doubtful  if  the  poor  blind  world  would  know  her  if  she  came. 


Saffnrd,    I..rs,    Irenft  C, 


Essays 


tC\Oi 


M81839 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  UBRARY 


